Janet closed her eyes after Farnsworth left. He was upset—hell, they were all upset—after losing Ken Whittaker. And apparently Ransom’s prognosis wasn’t wonderful. aTF headquarters would of course be asking why a Bureau resident agency had called for one of their people without clearing it through Washington, and why they had even been out there at the arsenal. Farnsworth, anxious at this point to keep the bullshit swirling, had probably told them that it was part of the missing kids case.
She turned in the bed to ease the pressure on her aching ribs. She vaguely remembered going through a wooden railing. That wood must have been very dry. The docs said she had no broken bones, and that she could check out in the morning, as soon as they made sure she hadn’t suffered a cardiac tamponade, whatever the hell that was. Her right wrist was swollen but usable.
The fly in all this ointment, of course, was Edwin Kreiss. She tried to remember if the DCB had been told about the Kreiss angle or not.
Because if they had, then Farnsworth’s game with the aTF wasn’t going to hold up for very long. And poor Kreiss: tearing up the visible world, looking for his daughter, and now the feds had her and weren’t going to tell him? She cursed all bureaucratic rivalries and fell asleep.
Browne didn’t see the cop car until it was too late; he was already signaling his turn into Jared’s entrance road. He slowed as the cop got out and
waved him over. With a sigh, Browne shut down the truck and prepared himself. There was no way someone could have made a connection between the arsenal explosion and him, he reassured himself again. Or Jared, for that matter, so this had to be something else. Had to be.
“Evening, sir. May I see some ID, please?”
“Certainly, Officer,” Browne said, reaching for his wallet.
“What’s going on here?”
The cop didn’t reply as he looked at Browne driver’s license. He asked him to please wait in the truck, then went back to his cruiser to make a radio call. When he came back over, he said, “There’s a sergeant coming out to speak to you, Mr. McGarand. It’ll just be a minute, sir.”
Browne saw that the cop was uncomfortable, rather than angry or suspicious.
Had something happened to Jared? Was this why he hadn’t shown up? Then he had an alarming thought. Had that woman’s husband caught them? Jared had said someone had been creeping around his trailer. He felt a pang of conscience—he remembered hoping that the woman’s husband would catch them. He knew the old rule: Be careful of what you wish for.
A dark four-door sedan nosed alongside the cruiser. Two men in civilian suits accompanied by a bulky state trooper with sergeant’s stripes got out and approached his truck. The trooper took his hat off and informed him that a man, whom they believed to be Jared McGarand, had been found fatally injured. Was he related to Jared McGarand? Browne said yes, he was Jared’s grandfather and his only local next of kin. Would he be able, and willing, to make a next-of-kin identification at the scene?
Browne, a cold feeling in his stomach, nodded a soundless yes. The trooper cleared his throat and began to explain that the victim had been crushed by the trailer, and that identification might be difficult. Browne blinked. Crushed by the trailer? That didn’t sound like some irate husband.
He took a deep breath and said that, yes, he’d do it.
He got out of the truck and waited for the trooper to introduce the two men in suits, but the sergeant did not do so. He almost didn’t have to;
Browne was almost positive they were government agents, probably FBI.
The city suits, the faintly supercilious expressions on their faces, and the body language of the local cops told the tale. Browne forced his expression to remain as neutral as he could get it. This was the enemy: The FBI, along with its incompetent cousin, the BATF, had taken William from him. It was one thing to talk about a formless, faceless, and powerful enemy, and quite another thing altogether to be standing
three feet away from two of its agents. On the other hand, he realized, they would expect him to lose his composure if his grandson had been killed. But why were they here?
They walked, rather than rode, back down jared’s entrance road to the trailer, Browne with the local cops, and the G-men bringing up the rear.
They rounded the corner and Browne saw the yellow Mylar tapes, a Crime Scene Unit van, two police cars, two unmarked police cars, and a coroner’s black-windowed ambulance. Jared’s pickup was parked next to his phone company repair van. Technicians in white overalls were wandering around Jared’s yard, while two men who were probably detectives stood talking and smoking cigarettes near the back of the trailer. The trailer’s doors were open and there were obviously people inside. Browne tried to think if jared would have anything in the trailer that might tie him to what they’d been doing at the arsenal, but he didn’t think so.
Unless he had a stash of copper, and even that could be explained, since he was a telephone repairman. Or had been one.
The trailer was no longer level. The space underneath the downed end of the trailer was curtained off with a temporary railing, on which some kind of fabric had been stretched. There was a portable light stand set up on one side, which a tech turned on as they approached. Browne hadn’t even noticed that it was getting dark. The cops put out their cigarettes as the sergeant escorted Browne to the curtain, offering at least a public show of deference to impending grief. Browne wasn’t worried too much about grief. He’d spent all he had when William had been killed. By some of these people, he reminded himself, glancing sideways at the two feds.
He still couldn’t figure out why they were here. Had something turned up in the trailer to draw in federal agents? And were they FBI or aTF?
The sergeant explained that Jared had been found underneath the trailer, next to a hydraulic jack, and that the jack had broken through the floor of the trailer, causing the trailer to drop directly onto Jared. Browne was conscious of a bad smell coming from behind the curtain. One of the Crime Scene Unit techs walked over and offered a small bottle of Vicks Vapo-Rub. Browne understood at once, and he rubbed a dab into each of his nostrils, then stepped forward. It was not a pretty sight. The end of the trailer had been jacked back up. Jared’s entire body was flattened and his head was swollen, the familiar face almost unrecognizable. There was an industrial-sized hydraulic jack positioned to hold up the near end of the trailer on a steel plate next to the body.
He saw as much as he wanted to see and then stepped back. He put the
back of his hand to his mouth, closed his eyes for a moment, and then nodded. The cops were watching him, probably to see if he was going to throw up, but the wave of nausea passed, replaced by a pang of long-lost familial hurt, the kind of hurt he had not experienced since watching the news tapes of those federal bastards cremating his son at Waco. Hate them, he told himself silently, suddenly very conscious of those two federal agents behind him. Hate them and feed on that hate. Maintain control of yourself. Jared’s beyond help or hurt, but you are the bringer of retribution. But you must not attract further attention.
He caused his shoulders to slump and his face to wilt.
“That’s my grandson, Jared McGarand. I guess I don’t understand what happened here.”
“Well, sir, we’re all looking into that. Do you know of any reason he’d go underneath that trailer like that? Or knock down those cinder blocks?”
Browne looked down at the twisted jack stand. He shook his head.
“Them cinder blocks were either knocked over or they fell over, one or the other,” one of the detectives said, pointing with a flashlight.
“Any idea why or what did that?”
Browne shook his head again.
“It doesn’t make sense, those blocks just falling over. Why would they do that? He hit it with his truck or something?”
The two federals, who had kept back while remaining within earshot, exchanged glances but didn’t say anything. Why are they here? Browne wondered again, fighting off the urge to look at them.
The sergeant was nodding.
“Yes, sir, that’s kinda what we thought. But there’s no sign of that. And it would take something pretty big, what with the weight of the trailer and all. We figured he may have been jacking the trailer so’s to reset the blocks or something.”
“What have you done with the dogs?” Browne asked, looking over their shoulders at the empty pen.
