Out of Nowhere, page 18
“Men,” Calder said. “Eyes and ears. Guns. Besides that kid who brought the food, how many of you are protecting us?”
“The kid’s just an errand boy. He’s deputized, but, you know, his uncle’s a city councilman. It’s just Sims and me on duty. We drew the short straws.” He guffawed. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Calder smiled, but Elle thought of a wolf who’d spotted an unwary rabbit. He said, “I imagined tough guys in SWAT gear, crawling around out there in the woods, watching the house through night vision binoculars.” He stretched back in his chair and chuckled. “I guess I’ve seen too many movies about covert operations.”
The two deputies laughed with him. Weeks said, “Naw, just us.”
“But officers back at your office are monitoring the security cameras, right?”
“You noticed ’em, huh?” Weeks said, seemingly amused.
“In the treetops on either side of the turnoff.”
Weeks winked at Sims and said to Calder, “We made ’em obvious so they’d serve the same purpose.”
“As what?”
“As real cameras,” Sims said. “They’re dummies.”
“Huh.” Calder looked over at Elle, who silently communicated that she shared his apprehension.
Sensing it, Weeks said, “Hey, not to worry. Y’all are safe. Nobody comes out here.”
“Why not?” Calder asked. “Are the dummy security cameras that much of a deterrent?”
“First off, the house is hard to find.”
Calder nodded. “It must be at least a mile back to the state highway.”
“Less than a half,” Sims said, reaching into his shirt pocket for a toothpick.
“Really?” Calder said. “When we drove it this morning, it seemed farther.”
“Because there’s no landmark to gauge the distance by,” Weeks said. “All pine trees look alike. Unless you’re a park ranger or something.”
“Is that road the only access to the house?”
“The only direct access. But it’s not like people are beating the door down to get into this place.”
“How’d the sheriff’s office come to own it?”
“A few years back, several regional agencies chipped in to buy it to use as a safe house for valuable witnesses like y’all, or women who escaped their abusers. You know, like that.”
“Well, it’s certainly ideal for hiding people, sitting out here all by itself,” Calder said. “No neighbors for miles.”
“Nearest is the Millers’ ranch. That’s at least five miles,” Sims said around the toothpick.
“Besides its being remote,” Weeks said, “the place has a dark history.” He bobbed his eyebrows.
Calder laughed. “Don’t tell me. It was a brothel.”
“No.”
“Speakeasy and gambling hall?”
“Wrong again.”
“It has a ghost?”
Dawn looked at Weeks with wide, frightened eyes.
Weeks grinned. “It’s not haunted, Mrs. Whitley. Not that I know of. But back in the nineties—”
“It was the eighties,” Sims said.
Weeks looked at the older deputy and cocked his head to one side. “You sure about that?”
“Positive. My daddy was a deputy then. He was in on the cleanup.” He removed the toothpick from the corner of his mouth and pointed it for emphasis. “It was the eighties.”
“Cleanup of what?” Calder asked.
“Family feud,” Weeks said. “One branch of a white-trash clan got crosswise with another branch.”
“Over the property?”
Weeks shook his head. “A litter of bird dogs. That’s what started it, anyway. It escalated from there. Resulted in a shootout at an abandoned filling station.”
“Where’s that?” Calder asked.
“As the crow flies, about a mile and a half from here. That way.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “It was the O.K. Corral all over again. When the smoke cleared, eight were dead. Those that survived died in prison.”
“My daddy discovered the bodies of two women here in the house,” Sims boasted. “They’d killed each other. With the same pistol.”
Calder said, “Wow. That is a dark history.”
“After that, nobody wanted anything to do with this place,” Weeks said. “Bad mojo. Scares people off, you know?” He looked across at Elle and motioned toward her burger basket. “Are you gonna eat the rest of your fries?”
They all helped to clear the table; then Weeks offered them the use of their phones again. “Keep it to three minutes. Just a good night.”
Dawn happily drew aside to call her husband.
Calder said, “I’m good,” and asked if he could make a pot of coffee.
Elle also declined to use her phone. She considered calling her parents but decided against it. Three minutes wasn’t enough time to explain her current situation adequately. A hurried summary would leave them distressed, not reassured.
Nor did she want to call Glenda again and be interrogated about Calder or provided with unwanted details about Jeff’s newborn son.
After Dawn surrendered her phone again, they all went into the living room, where Weeks tuned the TV to one of the playoff games they’d discussed over dinner.
Dawn discovered an abandoned book of crossword puzzles and applied herself to filling in the ones left unfinished. Elle chose a mystery novel from the bookcase.
After spending the earlier part of the day staring at her with the single-mindedness of an eagle, Calder seemed indifferent to her presence, except for when he’d looked at her to get her take on the dummy cameras.
He’d removed his familiar leather jacket and was wearing a plain white shirt, the tail untucked, the cuffs rolled back. He’d grown just enough scruff to make him look rough-and-tumbly delectable. She hated him for it.
No longer broody and temperamental, he seemed relaxed. He’d gotten increasingly chummier with the deputies and even anted up a five-dollar bill when Weeks suggested a friendly wager on the outcome of the game.
Elle observed the founding of this comradery with a skeptical eye. It was out of keeping with how artfully he had played the deputies at the dinner table. Neither of them seemed to have realized that it wasn’t the house’s history that he was interested in. He’d let them think they were impressing him with their knowledge, when actually he’d been mining information from them.
When he wanted something, Calder Hudson could be charmingly disingenuous. She should know.
When the trio of men boisterously objected to one of the umpire’s calls, she’d had enough. She replaced the novel in the bookcase. “I’m turning in.”
“Me too,” Dawn said. “These puzzles are too hard.”
Both Calder and Weeks said good night, but neither took their eyes off the television. Sims reluctantly left the party to escort Dawn and Elle up the enclosed staircase. After giving each of their bedrooms a cursory check, he wished them a good night and went back down.
Elle let Dawn have the bathroom first. When she came out, she paused in the open doorway of Elle’s room. “I’m glad you’re here, Elle. I mean, I’m not glad about any of it, but this would be really awkward with all the—” She motioned down the staircase.
“Testosterone.”
The young woman smiled. “Frank’s got a jealous streak. He told me that Mom wasn’t crazy about me going off to parts unknown with two strange men, either. Both like knowing there’s another lady here.”
“I’m glad there’s another lady here, too,” Elle said. “Good night.”
“See you in the morning.”
To Elle’s relief, Dawn went into her room and closed the door. She’d feared that Dawn would want to treat tonight like a sleepover.
She took her turn in the bathroom. When she came out, she noticed that all the lights were still on downstairs. Even after she’d turned out the lights in the bedroom and had gotten into bed, she could hear the TV and the muffled voices of the men coming up through the floorboards. The game must have gone into extra innings. It seemed never-ending.
Eventually, blessedly, the television was silenced. Conversation dwindled, then died. Although all became quiet, she had trouble falling asleep. She was still awake, lying on her side facing the windows, when she smelled leather, like Calder’s jacket. She sensed a shift in the air.
She rolled onto her back just as he planted his knee beside her hip on the mattress, leaned over her, and cupped his hand over her mouth. “Don’t say anything, just listen.”
She swatted his hand away. “Like hell I will. Leave this room now, or I’ll shout this place down.”
“Elle. Shh. Please.” He clasped her head between his hands and lowered his face close to hers. “After last night, I can’t even imagine what you must think of me.”
“I promise that whatever you can imagine, it’s worse.” She began pushing against him, trying to unbalance him, dislodge his knee from against her hip, break his hold on her. “Let go of me and get out of here.”
“Goddammit, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. This is a disaster—another disaster—waiting to happen. I’m getting out of here, and you’re coming with me.”
“Not if my life depended on it.”
“It does. Those men downstairs might be good-hearted good ol’ boys, but you heard them. They’re here because they drew the short straws. They’re ill-equipped. They’re lax. Protect us? Forget it.”
“Over the burger baskets, you were pumping them for information, weren’t you?”
“You saw through that?”
“Clearly. But you beguiled them.”
“I’m very good at it.”
“I know that too well.”
“Elle, last night—”
“Don’t.”
“Fine. We don’t have time to argue now anyway. Come on, get up, we’re leaving.”
“I wouldn’t go anywhere with you.”
She placed her hands on the undersides of his arms and pushed up, dislodging his hands from her head. He hissed, and she knew the move must have hurt his injured arm, but she used that moment of distraction to scramble off the other side of the bed. She rounded the end of it and rushed toward the door.
He caught up to her before she could open it and sandwiched her between it and him. He crowded in behind her, placing his hands firmly on her waist to hold her in place. His lips against her ear, speaking to her in a rushed, harsh whisper, he said, “Do you want that asshole to get the best of you?”
The shooter. That’s who he was talking about. “He already got the best of me. Charlie.”
“He may not see it that way, Elle. He may want you, too. Just like Perkins said, you’d be a trophy. Think of the fame he would achieve. First the boy, then the mother. Even if he’s caught, he’ll have gotten the last laugh.”
He took her by the shoulders and turned her around, lowering his face to within an inch of hers. “We’re sitting ducks here. You’ve got to trust me on this.”
“I don’t trust you to do anything but manipulate people.”
“I’ve already admitted that I have that talent. I’m a shit. And you don’t know the half of it. Last night, I walked out on you after some rocket-launch sex. Revile me for that. Boil me in oil. I deserve it. But first I’m getting you out of here if I have to drag you. Now, are you going to make this hard or easy?”
She hated giving in to him, but in spite of herself, she was swayed by his arguments. “Damn you.”
“Easy, then,” he said, relaxing a bit. “Good.”
“When should I be ready?”
“We’re going now.”
“Now? It’s the middle of the night.”
“No better time. Hurry. Get dressed.”
“I won’t leave Dawn.”
“I heard her coming downstairs but didn’t let her see me because she would start talking, asking questions. We’ll grab her on our way out. Let’s go.”
She stepped around him, reached for the pair of slacks she’d been wearing all day, and pulled them on over her boxer pajama bottoms. She tugged on a sweater over her tank top.
Calder had felt around in the dark on the floor beside the bed and found her discarded sneakers. He passed them to her. As she worked her feet into them, she asked, “Where are the deputies? They’ll try to stop us.”
“If we’re quiet, we’ll be out before they realize it. Sims is sitting in the hallway, asleep in his chair. Last I saw Weeks, he was in the living room, feet up, on his phone, probably—”
He was interrupted by an eruption of gunfire and a bloodcurdling scream.
For an instant, they froze. Then, “Shit!” Calder propelled Elle toward the closet, opened the door and pushed her inside.
She lunged out. “Dawn.”
He pushed her back into the closet. “Do not come out, and I fucking mean it.” He slammed the door shut.
“Calder!”
He had to ignore her, because all the while, the pop, pop, pop of gunfire and shattering glass was unrelenting, and so were Dawn’s screams.
He flung open the door to Elle’s room and ran along the dark hallway, barely catching himself from tumbling down when he reached the top of the staircase. He teetered there, fighting his instinct to plunge headlong into the fight as he had at the fairground.
But the action might draw more fire, put them all in greater danger. If he was dropped by a bullet, he’d be of no help to anyone, just like he’d been of no help to Charlie.
But, fuck it all, he couldn’t do nothing.
He descended the stairs with caution. He called out to Weeks, to Sims, to Dawn. No response, except for Dawn, whose screams could be heard above the deafening barrage of bullets and hailstorm of shattered glass. He figured the shooter must be firing through the row of three windows behind the kitchen table.
All the lights in the kitchen had been shot out, but there was a blue-white glow. The refrigerator light. Dawn had left the door of it open. She must be pinned down, in mortal danger. It would even the playing field if the shooter didn’t have that light.
He shouted, “Dawn, if you can, shut the fridge door!”
But the light stayed on. If he showed himself in the kitchen he’d immediately be fired on. Where the fuck were Weeks and Sims? What could he do without a weapon, without—
Dawn’s screams abruptly stopped. As though a switch had been flipped.
After another rapid series of shots were fired, the gunfire also ceased. The abrupt silence was almost as eerie as the explosive racket. Calder envisioned the shooter reloading in anticipation of another opportunity to kill.
Hearing the creak of old wood behind him, Calder spun around. Elle had made it halfway down the stairs. Furious, he made an emphatic motion with his hand for her to go back up. She mouthed Dawn’s name. He raised his shoulders, then repeated the gesture for her to return upstairs.
She looked mutinous, but she began backing up the stairs. He waited until the darkness at the top of the staircase obscured her; then he bent at the waist and crept toward the kitchen.
But even before he reached the doorway, he saw Sims’s body sprawled on the floor, his torso blown to bits.
Calder didn’t think twice. He took the unfired six-shooter from the dead man’s hand and, with a bloodlust that shocked even him, emptied the cylinder into the darkness beyond the broken windows.
Chapter 24
Compton watched Perkins dip his hand into a bag of potato chips and crunch a mouthful. “How come you can go through bag after bag of those and not get fat?” she groused.
“Life’s unfair.”
“You’re telling me.”
After returning from the safe house, they’d grilled the weasel Billy Green. He’d admitted that he’d passed along nickel-and-dime information to Shauna Calloway in the past and swore that the names of the material witnesses were the biggest bonanza he’d ever given her.
Their greatest fear was that he’d heard about the baseball cap or had learned the location of the safe house and had shared one or both of those pieces of information also. But after spending an hour coming down hard on him, their gut feeling was that disclosing the names of their witnesses had been his swan song.
He was fired and got a Do Not Pass Go escort out of the building. He was lucky not to have been tarred and feathered. Everyone who worked in any capacity for the sheriff’s department, in any of the precincts, had been outraged over the embarrassment his betrayal had caused.
“I mean, it’s not as if the whole goddamn world isn’t already crucifying us,” the sheriff had been quoted as saying. It was a justified boom of fury, because, nationwide, it was open season on his entire operation.
Heretofore it had been a role model for other law enforcement agencies of comparable jurisdiction. But because the Fairground shooter was still at large, the sheriff’s office was now being harshly criticized.
None were more aware of the microscope they were under than Compton and Perkins, the department’s senior homicide detectives. The CID, and in particular the two of them, were taking a beating.
They desperately needed a break. Even a person of interest would be a boon, a development they would gladly share with the media themselves. The provenance of the ball cap was still being tracked, but doggedness took time, and time consumption was increasing the pressure applied to them.
One crack, though slim, was the nature of Calder Hudson’s “consulting” work and the implications it might have. When they learned what his job entailed and how successful he was at it, Perkins had ventured, “The shooting began in the area where he was. Could he have been the target that day and all the others collateral?”
Compton had been dubious and had said so. “If somebody was that pissed off at him, why not just murder him in his house or as he crossed the street?”
Perkins hadn’t relented. “Still worth following up.”
Having no other lead to follow, they went about obtaining Calder Hudson’s files.
When Compton had informed him of their intention to review them, he had staunchly disclaimed the notion that an individual in his records bore him such a bloodthirsty grudge.
