Blood Silence (33 page)

“I’m across the street,” Rawlings stated, extending his hand. “It’s been an interesting day, Mac McRyan.”

“It has, Sam,” Mac answered, shaking the sheriff’s hand. “I’ll be in touch.”

“I look forward to it.” Rawlings walked between two cars and looked left before walking across the four lanes of East Broadway. His phone rang, and it was his son. “Hey Bobby, what’s up?”

Mac continued walking down the sidewalk, looking down at his phone, texting to Riley, “
All good, heading in for the …
” but stopped when he heard loud honking and then the roar of an engine behind him. He turned back to his left. “
Sheriff, look out! Look out!
”

Rawlings looked left as a black SUV bored in on him. He tried to jump to his right but was struck by the truck and sent hurtling through the air.

Mac instinctively moved toward Rawlings, but then in a blink, saw the passenger-side window of the SUV open, and he saw it—a gun. The SUV was veering towards him. There was a flash and a pop. He dove to his left, down behind a car. Bullets ricocheted off the car and the pavement and glass shattered and rained down on him. Then he heard the truck accelerating, pulling away. He reached for his gun on his back and jumped up, turned back to his left, reflexively checked the background, and fired back three times as the SUV roared east down East Broadway and eventually out of sight. Mac saw brief brake lights and then the taillights turning to the left far in the distance.

He glanced back left to see Rawlings lying in the street, not moving. People came streaming out of the front of the County Line as Mac sprinted across the street. “
Call 9-1-1! Call 9-1-1!
” Mac yelled. “
The sheriff is down! The sheriff is down!
”

Mac reached Rawlings, who was lying on his back, his legs pointing in unnatural directions, and bleeding heavily from the impact, but he was breathing, gasping for air. “Oh God!” he croaked. “Oh God!”

“Hang in there, man! Hang in there!” Mac exclaimed, checking the sheriff’s body for injuries, quickly finding oozing blood coming from the area above his left pelvis, his abdomen sliced wide open. Two police officers who were in the bar raced across the street with their guns drawn. Both had their cell phones to their ears, barking orders into them. The waitress and a bartender soon followed. The waitress had two towels in her hands.

“Give me those! Give me those!” Mac covered the wound with the towels, applying pressure.

The sheriff’s eyes were open but fluttering, his breathing labored, in gasps. Mac put his face down close. “Stay with me, Sam! Stay with me! Help is on the way!” And Mac could hear sirens in the distance. “Sam, God dammit, you stay with me!” he screamed as Rawlings’s eyes closed. “Sam!
Sam!
”

Then he heard a voice, shouting from the cell phone still in the sheriff’s hand, which he was holding close to his chest.
“Dad! Dad! Dad!”

T
he warm water ran over Mac’s hands as he scrubbed the blood off. Then he looked down and noticed that it had soaked into his jeans. He dampened a paper towel and pressed it to his right thigh to absorb the blood and extract it from the denim. Then he noticed blood all over the bottom of his black shirt, and even the tips of his hiking boots. He was a total mess, and he decided to accept it and turned off the water. He leaned over the sink and looked in the mirror at his tired face and relived the events of the last hour.

The ambulance had raced to the hospital, trailed by a convoy of sheriff’s deputies and patrol cars and then Mac.

Rawlings was unconscious but breathing, barely, and had just a faint pulse when the ambulance arrived at the hospital. He was rushed into the emergency room. In the craziness, with everyone standing around watching the doctors frantically work, he crashed. The doctors were able to restart his heart, stabilize him, and then rush him into surgery.

There had been no further word.

Mac exited the restroom, drying his hand with a paper towel, when Detective Brock approached with Borland.

“What happened?” Brock asked quietly, taking the lead, handing him a cup of coffee.

Mac sat down in a chair and leaned forward on his elbows, holding the Styrofoam cup in his hands, staring alternately at the floor and the blood on his clothes. “We left the bar, I think just after eleven,” he started quietly. “We were walking down the sidewalk toward our trucks. Sam started across the street. I think he was talking on his phone, and I was texting on my phone when I heard … a horn … a car horn. Someone was laying it on behind me. I turned, and a dark-colored SUV was hauling ass down the street right at Rawlings. I yelled out to him, but …”

“There was a report of shots fired,” the chief said.

Mac nodded. “First shots were fired at me from the SUV. I ducked down behind a car. As the SUV pulled away, I returned fire.”

“Did you hit them?” Borland asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” Mac replied. “It was hauling ass away, and it didn’t slow down after I fired, so while I might have hit the truck, I doubt I did any damage to the occupants.”

“Occupants, plural?” Borland inquired, confused.

“Had to be. One was driving, and one was shooting. The truck hit the sheriff, and a man in the passenger side was firing at me. We were both the targets.”

“Tell me about the SUV,” Brock asked.

“Black, or dark,” Mac answered. “Big, might have been a Suburban, Yukon, Expedition, Tahoe—I’m not sure. It happened fast, and it was dark. My glimpses were quick, blink-of-the-eye kind of things.” He made a mental note that the truck didn’t have the distinctive look of an Escalade.

“License plate?” Brock asked.

Mac shook his head.

“Do you have any idea why these people would come after you two?” Borland asked.

Mac looked up at him and thought for a second. He decided this was not a question he was going to answer right now. So he shook his head and replied, “No.”

“No?” Borland asked skeptically.

Mac shook his head. “No.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Believe what you want.”

“A couple of deputies told me you and Rawlings spent the day together,” Borland replied, notebook in his hand. “What were you doing?”

“Talking, taking a look at some things of interest for me and him.”

“Like what?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Do you really think you’re in the position to not say?” Borland asked, annoyed, his voice rising. He leaned down and pointed, his finger inches from Mac’s face. “I have the Williams County sheriff hanging on by a thread here, and he was with you when this all went down. I want answers.”

“Chief, I don’t know you,” Mac answered, setting his coffee cup on the table next to his chair. “And frankly, my assessment of you is, you don’t know dick about police work. So I don’t trust you. I can’t trust you with what I’m working on.”

“I don’t think you get to decide that.”

“Are you going to arrest me?” Mac looked up and smirked. “Good luck with that.”

“Now listen here, hot shot …” Borland stated loudly—too loudly—leaning down, poking Mac in the chest.

It was a bad move.

“No, you fucking listen, you incompetent shit,” Mac roared as he burst out of the chair, throwing his right shoulder into Borland, and sent the Williston chief flying into a wall across the hallway. The impact caused Borland to slump to the floor, groaning in pain.

Brock jumped in front of Mac. “Jesus, what are you doing?”

Other officers stepped in between as Borland slowly pushed himself up off the floor.

“Shit,” Mac muttered.

“Take the chief down the hall to cool off,” Brock suggested to the other officers and then quickly led Mac by his right arm down the hall in the opposite direction. “What in the hell are you trying to do, Mac?”

“That stupid fuck. How do you work for him?”

“Because I have no choice,” Brock replied sternly. “What were you and the sheriff doing today?”

“No.”

“Mac? Borland is right,” Brock pressed. “You can’t just not answer that question.”

“Leah, I’m not answering Borland because he’s an idiot who has no clue. I’m not going to answer you right now for your own protection.”

“My protection?”

“Yeah, the less you know right now, the better. Rawlings and I think we know who might be behind all of this—behind Adam Murphy, behind the Bullers, behind a lot of shit that’s been going down around here. And after tonight, somehow, some way, I think they know we know. At a minimum, they’re worried we’re getting close. What just happened confirms it.”

“Who?”

“I’m not saying.”

“How? How would they know?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, give me something to work with, Mac!” Brock demanded, hands on hips.

“If I give you something, Leah, then you end up on their radar. Heck, you might already be on it. Those weren’t two kooks coming after Rawlings and me tonight. Those were hitters with orders.”

“So?”

“So, I already have one boy who might lose a parent tonight, and I’m the one who put the sheriff in danger.” He looked Leah in the eyes. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to expose your son to that possibility. This is for your own good, so let me handle this. I think I know who or what is behind this, but I can’t prove it—yet. When the time is right, and if it’s safe, I’ll bring you in.”

“Borland is not going to accept that.”

“
Make him
accept it,” Mac counseled. “For his safety and for yours, let it go for tonight. See if you can find a dark SUV that might have been shot up. Canvas the area around the County Line. Pull traffic camera footage, if that even exists around here. Talk to others in the bar, and ask them if they saw anything. Do the other police work that needs doing. For now, I’m not talking about what Rawlings and I were working on today.”

“I don’t know, Mac,” Brock replied, not wanting to let it go.

“Do it, Leah. Do it,” Mac urged. “Have your people work the scene. Trust me on this. You looked me up. You know my history. I know what I’m talking about.”

Brock stared him down for another minute, reading him. “Okay.” She sighed, unhappy, and stuffed her notebook in her wool-coat pocket. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“That makes two of us.”

There was a commotion to their left, and it was Rawlings’s father, the former sheriff, and Sam’s son, Bobby, who looked terrified.

“That poor kid,” Mac muttered, shaking his head, sick.

“I need to go.”

“Yeah, you better.”

Brock walked away, and Mac leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and exhaled, wondering what to do next. The night was like a bad dream. He had no idea what his next move needed to be. He didn’t even want to think about it.

“Are you Mac McRyan?”

Mac opened his eyes to see a nurse standing in front of him with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Yes, I am.”

The nurse was shy. “This is weird, I know, but five minutes ago a very nice man asked me to bring you this coffee and this envelope.”

“A man?” Mac asked, on alert now, scanning the area.

“Yes,” the nurse answered. “He’s gone now.”

“Did he give you a name?”

“No.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Yeah, he was … maybe six-foot, thick, with wide shoulders and a barrel chest. He had silver, whitish, short hair.”

“How was he dressed?”

“In all black. He was wearing a black wool coat, black turtleneck, and black pants and shoes. He was dressed pretty sharp for around here, actually—kind of distinguished.”

“And all he said was to hand this to me?”

The nurse nodded.

“Okay, thank you.”

The nurse walked away. Mac looked to his left down the hall. Brock was talking to Borland, Rawlings’s dad and son, as well as with other officers, restoring calm. There was a hallway ahead of him, and Mac walked down it, out of the view of everyone, and into an empty hospital room. He set the coffee on a table and opened the package. Inside was a note and cell phone. The note provided a number and said: Call this number. It’s important.

Mac did as instructed.

“Mr. McRyan, I presume.”

“Who is this?”

“A friend.”

“A friend? Friends don’t need nurses to deliver burner phones.”

“I sent coffee.”

“Why do I remain skeptical?”

“I don’t blame you, based on the events of this evening. I saw what happened to you and the sheriff. I was parked just back up the street from you.”

“You saw?” Then Mac quickly thought back to just before Rawlings was struck by the SUV. “You’re the black Escalade. The honking horn? That was you?”

“Yes. I wish I could have done more. I really do, but that black SUV was on you before I really recognized what was happening. The horn, I’m sorry, that was all I could do.”

“You’ve been following me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to see how far you would get. Or more accurately, my employer wanted to see how far you would get.”

“Why?”

“Because he thinks he might be able to help you.”

“Help me? Help me how?”

“You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“Who is he?”

“Not yet. My instructions are to take you to him.”

“Take me to him?”

“Yes. Do you want to go for a ride?”

Mac thought for a moment. Was this a setup? He was right to think that way after all that had happened. But then again, why would they do something so elaborate one hour after trying to so crudely gun him down in the street? They wouldn’t—probably—and he wanted answers. “I’m game.”

“Good. Meet me at the Williston airport in one hour. And Mr. McRyan, there’s one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Come alone.”

L
eah drove Mac back to his hotel, escorted by two other patrol cars. She came up to his room, and the two of them cleared it while two other patrol units carefully prowled through the parking lot. “I’m going to station someone outside,” Brock suggested. “You need to get some rest, and you can’t get it if you’re constantly watching the door.”