Friendly Fire (13 page)

Jonathan turned and started walking back toward the woods and their vehicles beyond. “So until their names ended up in the news after our unpleasantness at the motel—”

“We had no idea where they'd evaporated to.”

Jonathan gave a bitter chuckle. “My God, if Middle America had any clue how screwed up the government really is—”

“Maybe they'd pay more attention to issues at the ballot box, and less on slogans and handouts,” Konan said, finishing Jonathan's sentence for him. “And no, I'm not the least bit insulted by your indictment of my work.”

“Anytime.”

“But all of this brings me to a new development that I bet you will find interesting. The al-Amin network—if that's what you could actually call it—has come alive in the last couple of days. They seem to think that they've been made, and that they are under attack. This is particularly interesting because we still have no idea who they really are. But in their swirl of communications, we picked up what we think is a reference to four operatives being killed.
Four,
not three. Do you have any idea who the fourth one might be?”

Jonathan felt his heart rate quicken. “I think I might, yes.”

Konan's features darkened. “Don't you dare play coy with me. I just committed half a dozen felonies by telling you what I have.”

While Jonathan despised showing any of his cards, Konan had earned a right to see this one. “There's a John Doe in the morgue in Braddock County,” he said. “I happen to know that Mr. Doe's real name was James Stepahin, and don't ask me how or why I know this, but he used to be a freelancer for a different part of the alphabet.”

“CIA?”

“I neither confirm nor deny. And don't bother checking because you'll only get frustrated. Believe me or don't, but I know what I'm talking about.” Jonathan couldn't imagine a circumstance where he would betray Wolverine's confidence.

“Now that's interesting,” Konan said. “How did he die?”

“Murdered in a parking lot. By a coffee shop barista.”

“You're shitting me.”

“It's a long story. What's the chatter saying?”

“They think they're under assault. I suspect they're going to the mattresses, as it were.”

Jonathan caught the reference to Mob-speak for preparing for a siege. “That's good, isn't it?”

“Not necessarily. If they drive themselves too far underground, we'll lose them completely. We do know that they continue to recruit, but their model is far less based on jihadist principles than it is on wreaking havoc and getting revenge.”

“Revenge for what?”

“That's the brilliance of their model,” Konan said. As they crossed back into the cover of the foliage, tension visibly drained from his shoulders. “It's not a focused anger, but rather an all-purpose anger. Against cops, against politicians, against your next door neighbor.”

“It's an anarchy site, then.”

Konan weighed the word. “I suppose. I prefer revenge.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Jonathan said, thinking aloud.

“Think about it,” Konan pressed. “I mean, if you can attack all the underpinnings of what Middle America finds to be a source of comfort, you create terror in the most literal meaning of the word.”

“And we can't get ahead of it,” Jonathan said.

“That would seem to be the case,” Konan agreed. “Certainly, people like me continue to get paychecks because of the anticipation of terror, and contractors make shit pots of money, but after trillions of dollars spent since nine-eleven, I can't testify that we're demonstrably safer than we were on nine-ten.”

It was a depressing reality that everyone in the Community accepted as fact.

“And you know what scares the living shit out of me?” Konan asked.

Jonathan waited for it.

“It will take only one hardcore, seriously coordinated hit to send the country into a panic. I think the American psyche is
that
unprepared for another attack.”

Jonathan sensed so much negative energy emanating from his old friend that he offered a softer version of the truth. “You know, it's not like we've accomplished nothing. We've reunited tens of thousands of bad guys with their maker. At seventy-two apiece, the price of virgins must be skyrocketing.”

“For every one we kill, another ten step up to take their place. The bad news is, it's not just Muslims anymore.”

Now
that
was a point to which Jonathan could personally testify. “Are you always this upbeat and cheerful?” he quipped.

“Nah,” Konan said with a laugh. “Sometimes I get a little down. Especially around the holidays.”

Chapter Thirteen

P
am Hastings recognized the expression in Jed Hackner's face the instant she saw it. The best label she could conjure was annoyance. “I'm not building a defense strategy for your newest pet prisoner,” he said.

Pam ignored his words and helped herself to the chair in front of his desk. “You're going to thank me for this,” she said.

“Is it about Ethan Falk?”

“It is. But—”

“I don't want to hear it. Not unless it makes our case stronger.”

“How about if I can help you close a triple homicide?” She'd been preparing for that line, and it launched and landed exactly as she'd hoped.

“I don't remember a triple homicide,” Hackner said, but she'd clearly piqued his curiosity.

“That's because it was outside of Ashland, Ohio.”

“Get out of my office.” Hackner dipped his head to return to his paperwork.

“It happened eleven years ago.” Pam put a singsongy lilt into her voice. Unspoken temptation.

“And?”

“And it's still an open, unsolved case.” The hook hadn't sunk yet, but she could see him sniffing at it.

“I thought Ethan Falk said he was kidnapped from someplace in upstate New York.”

“Geneseo.”

“I don't care. What does Gen-whatever in New York have to do with Pikeville, Ohio?”

“Ashland.”

“I don't care about that either. What's the connection?”

“The connection is three bodies, all shot at close range with two-two-three caliber bullets, plus signs of explosive entry.”

Hackner put his pen down and shifted back in his seat. He was a trim man, but his ancient chair creaked anyway. “That's what Ethan described.”

“Exactly. But there's more. When the Ashland detectives did their investigation, they found what they called a dungeon in a space under the basement. It showed signs of having been occupied.”

“What kind of signs?”

“That's where the reports get fuzzy,” Pam said. “Much of the record has been sealed.”

“Why?”

“That's part of the fuzziness. I don't know.”

“Was it part of a court order?”

“More fuzz.”

“Well, dammit, Hastings, there's nothing there to work with.”

“Not true,” Pam said, and she opened her binder to a bookmarked page. “I have the name of the investigating officer. He's still in Ohio.”

“Have you talked with him?”

“I tried. But he hung up on me.”

“Why?” Hackner blushed as he realized the stupidity of his question. “Hard to find out after a guy hangs up.”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Have you tried again?”

“I want to talk to him in person,” Pam said. “I'm more persuasive eye-to-eye.”

Hackner's eyes narrowed. “You want me to give you permission to go to Ohio, don't you? You want me to help you spring your sociology experiment.”

“I want you to help me solve a case,” she insisted.

“For the good people of Ashford, Ohio.”

“Ashland.”

“I still don't care.”

“Come on, Lieutenant. Don't you—”

“Go.”

Pam paused, feeling a little stunned. “Excuse me?”

“It's only one word, Detective. Go. It means git. Run away. Call if you need to shoot anyone.”

She saw the smile as he spoke, and knew better than to sell to the sold. “Thank you,” she said.

“You're still here.” Jed Hackner returned to his paperwork.

* * *

Twenty-seven days, four hours, and thirty-seven minutes. Calendar days, mind you, not work days. When the clock turned that many times, Cletus Bankstrom would be a man of leisure and luxury. On that day, at that time, he would have been an employee of Braddock County for exactly thirty years, and that meant he would no longer be an employee at all. Retirement, baby. And not a retirement where he had to pay himself out of his own savings—though he'd done a pretty good job stuffing cash away over the years. Instead, because he was damned old, he qualified for the county's old-school pension. The one where they owed him a fat check every month for the rest of his life, no matter how much money he had in the bank. If he closed his eyes, he could already see the boat in the lake, feel the weight of the fishing pole in his hands as the water gently rocked him to the purest form of peace there was.

The county had exactly that much time to find and train his replacement, or the police department's property room would have to live without a manager. He'd heard of guys who punch out of a career only to return as a “consultant” to help with “transitions” and other such bullshit business speak, but that wasn't him. When Cletus was out, he was out. It had been a good run, but he was done.

His wife told him that he would miss the people when he left, but he wasn't so sure. The guys were nice enough—and Chief Michaels was a man that Cletus admired—but as a civilian employee, he could never enjoy full status in the cop club. No one was rude to him—at least not per se—but he sensed a silent disdain for the work he did. And the rules he had to follow.

Cletus was the guy who had to tell ate-up young, studly, world-saving rookie cops that they were allowed exactly four magazines for their duty weapons, and that for a new one to be issued, an old one needed to be turned in. The same was true of ASPs, nightsticks, MagLites and holsters. And shirts and vests, and, and, and . . . Yes, he got that the sworn officers were risking their lives every day out on the streets, but let's be honest: Braddock County wasn't exactly the Bronx. It wasn't even DC or Baltimore. Sure, they had their crime, but the way some of these younger cops wanted to kit up, you'd think they were in Baghdad.

And if you wanted to know Cletus's thoughts on things, that was exactly the problem: More than a few of the kids had in fact served in Baghdad. And Kabul and God knew how many other damned scary places. They were so used to getting shot at that they prepared for a new firefight every day.

But as luck would have it, no one in fact did want his views, so he largely kept them to himself, and counted the days.

He'd be lying, though, if he said he didn't enjoy handling some of the toys he got to play with. Cletus figured there was a little boy inside every man—didn't matter how old he was—and every little boy liked to play with rifles and pistols and bullets and ballistic armor. Plus, there were the electronics, everything from listening devices to night vision to their most recent acquisition: their own fleet of three drones that no one yet knew how to fly. The Department of Homeland Security had been most benevolent these past few years, throwing so much money at police departments that it was darned near impossible to spend it all.

And every item that came to BCPD arrived through Cletus. He opened the crates and the packages, he cataloged the serial numbers and the property tags, and he made sure that everything ended up exactly where it was supposed to be. Let's see one of those eager-beaver cruiser jockeys keep everything together with that level of detail.

The more he thought about it—and he'd been thinking a lot these past few months, ever since he'd announced his retirement date—the more he realized that the time was right for him to leave. Too much had changed in too short a time for him to keep up with it all. It wasn't just the new computer system and the other bullshit efficiency measures, either.

In the past few years, there'd been a palpable change in the atmosphere of the BCPD that he didn't like one bit. Yes, the cops were more paranoid and trigger-happy, but the society they protected had become angrier than they'd ever been in the past. It was as if the general public no longer looked at the police as providers of peace, but rather as the enemy. Cletus had reached the point where he avoided telling people he met that he worked for the department at all. He told them that he was a county employee, and then he avoided the rest.

It didn't help that the sworn officers' daily garb had switched from the long-standing light blue shirts atop dark blue trousers to an ensemble of black-on-black that made every one of them look like they were part of an assault force. The guys loved it because it made them look tougher—cooler—but who wanted to approach a storm trooper for directions? Who wanted to seek assistance from a soldier festooned with weapons and ballistic gear? The officers would say they wore the new kit because the streets were getting tougher for them, but they never saw a connection with the fact that cops these days projected malice.

Cletus understood the viciousness of the circle, but the world he lived in was many times more nuanced than that which was imagined by many of the cops with whom he interacted. These were same cops who continuously pressured him to break the rules and allow them to have special favors that the department would never allow. He'd lost count of how many times he'd heard, “I won't tell, and if you don't tell, there's no way anyone can be the wiser. Come on, Clete, be part of the team.”

No, sir, Cletus Bankstrom had lived sixty-six years on the right side of honesty, and he wasn't about to start crossing that line now. If only his was not such a minority commitment. It used to be that pilferage was never a problem, that you could trust cops to be trustworthy. And for the most part, they were, but there again, something about the current crop of newcomers—something about the way they were wired—apparently made it okay to steal. For the past year, year and a quarter, inventories that used to balance one hundred percent had begun to show losses. Nothing huge, maybe five thousand dollars total over that period, but that was a huge increase over a baseline of zero, and Cletus lost sleep over even the little stuff.

Now he was reviewing the incoming receipts from the laundry service, and he could see that Sergeant Dale had signed for thirty uniform blouses and thirty pairs of trousers when in fact there were only twenty-five of each on the racks that had just been delivered to his storage room. Good lord, how was Cletus supposed to do his job if he couldn't even get the supervisory officers to count before they signed? This was the last straw.

Cletus was not a confrontational guy—and he for sure didn't want to spend his waning days with the department in conflict—but he had to do something about this.

Sergeant Dale sat down the hall in an office that allowed barely enough room for a desk and chair. In charge of logistics and planning, he was seen by many as a suck-up and finger-pointer. Cletus always figured that Dale had another job on the side, else how could he afford to drive a Maserati? The official version of things was that he'd won a settlement in a lawsuit over a traffic accident. Cletus didn't believe the story, probably because he didn't like the guy, but that was for Internal Affairs to referee, not him.

As Cletus turned the corner into the office, he caught the sergeant in the middle of a conversation with Yolanda Pierce, a pretty young thing who knew she was hot as hell and flaunted it everywhere she went. Yet another member of this generation who didn't understand the meaning of propriety. Short skirts and dipping blouses were for the dance floor, not for the office. But again, that was not his job. She worked in the IT department, and that meant Cletus had very little interaction with her.

“Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt,” Cletus said.

“No, that's okay,” Dale said. “We're about done here.”

Yolanda looked startled. She turned quickly to see who'd entered behind her, and as soon as she made eye contact, she broke it off. “Yes,” she said. “I was just about to leave.”

Something happened between them in the three seconds that passed as she pushed her chair out and stood. Cletus had always prided himself in his ability to read people—to read their expressions—and what he saw from Dale was an eye twitch that said, “Don't worry about it.”

About what?
Cletus wondered.

As she left, Yolanda said nothing to Cletus. She just edged past and left.

“What was that?” Cletus asked.

Dale feigned shock. “What was what?”

“I got an odd vibe.”

The sergeant shrugged. “You felt what you felt,” he said. “Doesn't mean it was there. What do you need, Clete?”

Cletus brandished the uniform receipt. “You signed this,” he said.

Dale leaned forward and squinted. “Uniforms?”

“Exactly.”

“I frequently sign for laundered uniforms.”

“You signed for thirty,” Cletus said. “Thirty complete sets—blouses and trousers. There were only twenty-five.”

Dale's eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?” he said.

“With all due respect, Sergeant, it doesn't help me do my job if you don't do yours.”

“And what, exactly, do you perceive my job to be?”

There was a menace in Dale's tone and posture that gave Cletus a chill. This was a man capable of violence. Rumor had it, in fact, that the reason Dale had a desk job instead of being on the street was because he'd beaten the tar out of a kid who had done nothing wrong.

Cletus broke the sergeant's gaze and instead focused on the receipt as he spoke. “Sergeant, sir, I expect you to count the items you sign for, before you sign for them.”

“Why would Destin Uniform Company want to short us five sets of uniforms?”

“Wait. What?”

“Why would the uniform company want to short us on our delivery? They always deliver what they say they're going to. Did you call Destin and ask them?”

“Of course I did,” Cletus said. “And of course they maintain that they shipped us thirty uniform sets. What else are they going to say?”