1 Motor City Shakedown (20 page)

As she said it, she realized that she had just vocalized the intention to destroy evidence. For the briefest of moments, her fingertips paused over the keyboard. But only for a moment. She knew she was crossing some arbitrary line that had been built into her during law school. But she also knew that while deciding she was going to tie her immediate future to the fortunes of Darren Fletcher, that line had been obliterated. Sitting at the computer, she wasn’t concerned about professional rules of ethical conduct.

She was going to help. She was going to do whatever it took to pull a client she’d never met out of a quagmire of trouble. Vernon was dead and only his reputation, such as it was, could be helped. But Johnny Two Leaf was alive, and in real peril. By all accounts, he was a young man on the wrong path. He was a screw up about to earn himself entrance into a life of regret, unless someone would speak for him. Like so many of the unfortunates who found themselves caught up in the perpetual circuit of criminal jeopardy, Johnny Two Leaf needed a voice.

Issabella was going to be that voice.

“You’re right about the toilet,” Darren mused as she started typing. “It would take forever. And that’s if we don’t clog the thing. Roto-Rooter might ask questions about snaking a toilet full of primo brown sugar.”

“You’re kind of a funny guy,” Patrick said.

“Just kind of?”

“The Ojibwe have stories about your type. Wenebojo the trickster. Someone who gets to the truth, but only in a sideways way.”

“That’s…a compliment?”

Patrick shrugged. “If you want. A thing is a thing.”

“This thing is a life sentence worth of heroin.”

“A hose.”

“Heroin.”

“No, no,” Patrick said, and he smiled. “There’s a hose out back. Johnny used it to wash his car before it got repossessed. We can use the hose to dissolve the heroin outside. Just move the stuff out there and drench it until it’s all gone. Deliver it back into the earth where it came from.”

“That’s a very Native American way to put it.”

“I try to keep it real,” Patrick said, and turned away toward the door. “You gather the heroin and carry it outside while I check on the hose.”

Darren paused to look affectionately at Issabella furiously typing. He felt a rush of satisfaction he hadn’t known for a long while, since before the first time he’d opened his mail and found a terrible lime green rectangle waiting for him.

He scooped bricks of heroin into his arms and turned toward the door leading out to the oven-room.

Several feet ahead of him, Patrick Two Leaf’s head exploded in a plume of blood and he fell dead to the concrete floor.

EIGHTEEN

A
llen Phelps was perched at the top of the sloping lane leading down to the crematorium, his car’s engine idling while he regarded the two vehicles parked near the building below.

‘The
Indian,’
he thought.
‘The Indian… and someone else.’

The black SUV squatted there, shiny and clean in the afternoon light. He could easily imagine it as belonging to the fleet of vehicles assigned to smug, shit-eating FBI agents. City cops drove dented, beaten sedans. The feds, they drove sleek cool things exactly like the one parked down in the basin.

In that moment, Allen shifted from ‘flight’ mode, back into the function he was far more familiar and comfortable with: ‘hunt’.

The smirking agent that had tossed his grand jury subpoena in the dirt at Allen’s feet was inside that crematorium. They’d been putting puzzle pieces together ever since Vernon had decided to turn snitch. That puzzle had been filled in enough to get Allen summoned to a grand jury lynching. And since then, more pieces had fallen into place. Enough pieces that the FBI agent had jumped a plane up here and descended on all the evidence that might be inside the crematorium.

Allen saw all of that in his mind’s eye. He saw the blond twit handling the Indian, intimidating him, suggesting deals for cooperation. He saw the Indian producing heroin bundles and babbling everything he knew about Vernon Pullins’ drug dealing business with the Detroit Police Department. Vernon had described him as a pill-popper. Allen had never met Johnny Two Leaf, but he knew one thing was always true: junkies talked.

He put the car in reverse and slowly backed out of the lane. He drove a quarter mile down the road and pulled down into the weeds at the edge of the road. There was no traffic, just the seemingly endless expanse of forest and an empty dirt road.

He popped the trunk. Inside were two duffel bags full of cash and heroin, and a third bag, also black and made of nylon. Inside that long bag was the Remington M42 sniper rifle Allen had used to kill thirty-seven men on the other side of the world.

Allen slung the bag over his shoulder, shut the trunk, and marched off into the trees with a shining anticipation animating his eyes.

Ten minutes later, he was laid out on his stomach atop the rise of earth overlooking the crematorium. He assembled the rifle with unconscious precision. He thumbed the bi-pod down and settled into the cradle that was his targeting position—sprawled out flat on his belly, his vision flying through the scope and magnifying the windows of the crematorium. Allen was in the wind, drifting between the rifle and the windows, intangible, invisible and all-seeing.

‘There is a dark and hungry God above. And I am his hand upon the earth.’

A fellow sniper named Frank Gillens had whispered the mantra in his ear on the first day after Allen arrived in the desert. Allen had been eager and cocksure and ready to use the skills the military had built in him, and Gillens had taken him under his wing. That had been a week of war stories, with the hardened veteran feeding the flames in an inexperienced Allen Phelps. A week after that, Gillens was just another body in a bag getting shipped back stateside. Allen took the mantra up as his own, a ceremonial carrying-on. He breathed it into existence thirty-seven times, and each time a man was delivered from the world.

When the raven-haired
Indian appeared inside the realm of his vision, Allen pulled the trigger and fed his hungry god.

*

Issabella was half-way out of the chair, startled by the sound of shattering glass and something heavy falling on the floor of the oven room.

Darren filled her vision. He spun and clamored over the desk, grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled the two of them down onto the floor amid the plates of unfinished food and candy wrappers.

“Gross! Darren what—“

He put his hand over her mouth and she saw his expression was wild with apprehension. He leaned over her, his weight keeping her from struggling up to her feet.

“Patrick’s dead,” he whispered. “Someone just shot him through the window. In the head. Can you do what I tell you to do?”

A chaotic a
rray of emotions filled her. Mr. Two Leaf was dead? She’d been typing one second ago! What in the world was Darren talking about? That sound had been Mr. Two Leaf’s
body
?

“Izzy,” he hissed. “I need you to do what I say. We’re leaving.”

Issabella nodded, and Darren slipped his hand off her mouth.

“The TAC team,” she whispered, and Darren nodded. “Oh my god. They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

Darren stared down at her with clear, steady eyes.

“We’re not dying today, Izzy. Follow me and stay on your hands and knees. The windows in the oven-room are several feet up from the floor. The sniper probably doesn’t have a view of the floor.”

On his hands and knees, Darren crawled around the desk until he was in the doorway, peering into the oven room. He looked back at Issabella.

“You have to come with me, kiddo. Just crawl like I am and we’ll get out of here.”

Darren had his arm outstretched toward her, and the concern in his voice silenced all of the conflicting impulses that had swept over her like a deluge. She got on her hands and knees and crawled over to where he was.

“Good.”

“Darren, I’m…”

“I know. I am, too. But we’re just going to run away and get out of here, so just think about that.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to go first,” he whispered. “We’re going to crawl in there and go left to the supply closet. If this place is like the other one, then there’s a little window in the closet and we can go through it and be on the other side of the building than whoever’s shooting.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a lot of blood around Patrick. Just look away from him and keep right behind me.”

“Okay.”

“Ready?”

“Okay. Yes.”

Darren smiled and nodded his head. He started crawling forward through the doorway. His feet disappeared around the corner, and Issabella started to follow after him, her whole body trembling with the sort of uncontrollable shivers she’d get as a kid standing at the bus stop in January, freezing and miserable in the early morning darkness. She ignored the faltering trembles and kept on
, poking her head into the oven room.

Patrick Two-Leaf was sprawled in an awkward heap on the floor, a pool of blood seeping and expanding around him. Issabella closed her eyes against the sight and fought the creeping dread it summoned inside her. Part of her wanted to remain rooted exactly where she was, to keep her eyes shut and just refuse to participate in reality until reality changed back to something that wasn’t a nightmare.

Instead, she scolded herself and put another hand forward, intent on following Darren into the room and out of the building. Reality
would
change, she knew-- but only if she forced it to. Resolute, she forced her eyes open and inched further into the room.

A second gunshot erupted through the room, shattering her calm, and Issabella screamed.

*

The
Indian was dead.

Through the scope, Allen calmly examined the scene inside the crematorium. He noted the hole in the wall where his bullet had buried itself. There was a small spattering of blood surrounding the hole, carried along with the furious momentum of the bullet. The
Indian himself was hidden from view, below the windows. Allen scanned, breathing slow and steady, his mind uncluttered and serene.

There
, along the shiny-smooth face of a crematory oven. A spray of blood dripped and ran down the machine, and mingled within it were sharp little fragments of bone and bits of brain matter.

Allen smiled with fierce satisfaction at the confirmation.

‘Bingo. Good-bye, Johnny Two Leaf. See you in the Happy Hunting Grounds, chief.’

Allen wasted no more time in celebration. Remaining in the air between the scope and interior of the crematorium, he drifted with the meager wind and kept all of his attention fixed on what he could see inside. He shifted seamlessly from confirming the
Indian’s death, into an internal game of predicting what the still-living would do now that they knew a killing presence was upon them.

In the desert, this had been the most important aspect of missions. The first trigger pull was, really, a sort of freebie. After that, the game became anticipation and patience. Where would the other targets go? And how long would they just freeze in fear and remain crouched away and hidden? This was the hunt. This was the real thrill—the glee of knowing that he was implacable, inevitable death. Human minds below him were bent on evasion and escape. His sole reason for existence was reduced to the simple act of revealing the truth to those panicked souls: they were already chosen for removal, and this was a fate they could not outwit.

There was a closed door along the back wall of the room. Allen settled on a pattern of watching. He would watch the door, then drift to the right and scan the corner of the building where the main entrance would disgorge anyone who tried to crawl out to the vehicles parked outside. Those were the only escape routes he could see from where he was, so he patrolled them both with equal attention.

When he spied movement in the corner of the room-- nothing more distinct than the shifting of shadows near the closed door --Allen’s strategy solidified. He would shepherd the living into the open.

The movement continued, inching closer to the door.

‘There is a dark and hungry God above. And I am his hand upon the earth.’

Allen pulled the trigger a second time.

The movement stopped and a woman’s scream leapt like a shrill alarm out of the building. Allen blinked and pulled himself out of the air, back into himself. He raised his head up, away from the scope. The serenity inside him evaporated and his face bent into a dark, contemplative frown.

There was no question that the scream had been a woman’s. He’d heard enough wailing in his work to recognize the terrible, plaintive sound of female sorrow.

Tumblers fell into place in Allen’s mind, and he came to a swift conclusion. The blond FBI agent
wasn’t
in the building down below. No, the Indian had been ferreted out and contacted by the lawyers. That scream was from the woman he’d seen in the hospital, the young, good-looking girl who’d been in Vernon’s room with the other lawyer.

Killing Vernon hadn’t been enough to send them off looking for some other big money case. They’d stuck with it and filed a lawsuit to bring the missing heroin to light. And now they were cowering around a dead
Indian they’d planned on putting on a witness stand in order to sing to the world what a monster Allen Phelps was.

He remained frozen for several seconds, contemplating his options in light of his new assessment of reality. The two lawyers wouldn’t have guns. They wo
uldn’t be trained like the FBI agent. They were just two terrified civilians trapped inside a cement box.

Allen laughed softly at the situation as he saw it. He stood up straight and stretched li
ke a cat among the trees. He pulled the Glock from its holster and descended down the slope.

*

Issabella kicked shut the utility closet’s door once she had crawled through, despite the overwhelming urge to just fall apart. Tears leapt into her eyes, swelling and running down her face. She shifted on her hands and knees and looked into the little closet’s dim interior.

Darren had been shot.

He had been halfway into the closet, pausing to look back and make sure she was still with him. He’d managed a reassuring smile and nod.

“You’re doing great, Izzy.”

Then the second thunderclap of gun fire erupted through the room. Darren pitched forward and down, a weak groan rustling out of him. Panic had seized hold of her and she only dimly registered that she was screaming. He was limp and quiet for a second, and Issabella was as certain as she had ever been of anything that Darren was dead.

But then his shoes moved, and his legs, drawing up, pushing against the floor. Noiselessly, Darren scuffed and slid himself the rest of the way into the closet.

In the unlit interior of the closet, Issabella couldn’t make out his features. He was a dark mass on the floor. She put her hands forward, feeling, and touched his legs. She squeezed them, reassuring herself that he was there and alive.

“Izzy.”
His voice was weak and haggard.

A sob wrenched out of her.

“Baby, get out the window,” he whispered. “Don’t stop now. Get out the window right now.”

“Darren…”

“Now,” he hissed. “Get
out
of here.”

Above them both, the window was a rectangle of light, high enough on the wall that it only illuminated the upper-half of the shelves lining the walls and the cleaning supplies stacked on them. She saw that window was already partially open, the sort that can be pushed outward from the bottom and propped that way with a little metal rod.