No Man's Land (14 page)

Travor’s bald head disappeared, leaving the door ajar. Elias
Romero fingered his necktie a couple of times and started for the
opening. He flicked his black eyes her way. Iris put on a haughty
gaze, folded her arms across her prominent prow and turned her back
on him. She was glad he was suffering. Made up some for all the lies
he’d told her. For some. Just some. She was glad he’d been picked
to do the press conference. Shit rolls downhill they’d told him.
It’s
your
prison.
You
get out there and explain the
leak. Bastard deserved it. He closed the door behind himself as he
left. He mounted the dais and began adjusting the microphone upward.
Goddamn thing was set up for a midget. Somebody’s idea of humor.
Iris maybe. The thought of her threat sent a shiver down his spine.
His wife, Constance. She couldn’t find out. Period. End of story.
That cat got out of the bag . . . shit . . . no telling what might
happen there.

He could feel beads of sweat forming around the roots of his hair.
What with the riot and all, he had no doubt. Any further scandal
would surely get his ass out the door. Hell . . . he might be on his
way out already.

The scrape of a hundred shoes and the clatter of television
equipment failed to drown out the booming thud that roared from the
sound system when the microphone came loose from the stand, leaving
Elias Romero standing before the crowd with the mike in his hand like
a lounge singer. Took him a full two minutes to get the damn thing
attached to the stand again. Even after all of that, he had to bend
hard at the waist to get his mouth anywhere near the mike. He wanted
to curse and kick the stand over, but restrained himself. He was on
his own. Asugea and the corporation people had gone into the
cellblocks to have a look around. The governor and his people wanted
no part of anything might make them look bad, so, other than Travor,
they were nowhere to be found. He was about to be a one-man news
conference.

He looked up and found himself gazing into a sea of unblinking
electronic eyes and expectant faces. They were all there. CBS, NBC,
ABC, CNN, MSNBC. The whole nine yards.

He turned away long enough to clear his throat and then began.

“
Ladies and gentlemen,”
he said.

The cameras began to whir. “
I’m going to read a brief
statement, after which I’ll take a few questions. As I’m sure you
all understand, we’re still quite busy securing the facility and
will need
to keep this as brief as possible.”
A buzz of
cynicism ran through the crowd. Elias Romero ignored it and forged
on. “
As of this
morning, the facility is completely under
control. All inmates are
back in their cells and normal prison
functions have been reinstated.”
He pulled a handkerchief from
his pants pocket and mopped the back of his neck. “
A preliminary
count . . .”
He paused for effect. “
A preliminary count
indicates that a total of
fifty-seven people were killed
during the incident.”
The buzz got louder. “
Fifty inmates
and seven staff members, one of whom apparently died of natural
causes.”
The buzz had become a roar. Romero held up a
restraining hand. “
I want to emphasize that
these figures
are preliminary and that final tallies will not be available until
later this afternoon.”

By the time he finished, the buzz in the room sounded like an
airplane was about to land. First question was from the CNN reporter.
“Can you confirm, Mr. Romero, that the film clip aired last night
on the ABC program
American Manhunt
was genuine?”

He was determined not to outright lie and figured the best he
could do was keep it short and sweet. “
Yes,”
was all he
said before calling for another question.

“The inmate in the clip,” the question began. “Is that
inmate accounted for at this time?”

Romero took a deep breath. The words nearly stuck in his throat.
“
No. At this time, he is not.”
The buzz reached airliner
levels. “How many other inmates are unaccounted for?”

“
We have several bodies which . . . ah . . . due to the level
of
damage, are going to require forensic identification.”

“But you don’t believe any of them is this . . .” The AP
reporter checked his notes. “. . . this Timothy Driver.”

“
No. I didn’t say that. I said, we won’t know until the
forensic examinations have been completed.”

“Is Driver the only inmate believed to be missing?”

“
I didn’t say he was believed to be missing. As I said,”
Romero began to show his exasperation. “
As of this morning .
. .”
He hesitated, waiting for the roar to subside and then
held up a moderating hand. “
I want to emphasize . . .”
He
raised his voice. “
I must
again emphasize . . . until the
forensics people are finished there is
just no way we can give
you an accurate accounting.”

“Can you give us some idea how this Timothy Driver managed to
escape his cell and literally take over the prison?”

“
No we cannot,”
Romero said.

“Our sources tell us Mr. Driver was under twenty-four-hour video
surveillance. Surely you should be able to—”

Romero interrupted. “
It appears Mr. Driver may have managed
to erase the tape loop used to record activity in his cell.”

“How could a prisoner . . .”

Romero anticipated the question. He’d been waiting for it.

“
Mr. Driver is not your run-of-the-mill convict, Mr. Blitzer.
He
has two master’s degrees. One from the Naval Academy in
advanced warfare techniques and another from Harvard in electrical
engineering. He’s a highly trained professional and thus
capable of things . . . outside the realm of other convicts.”
Romero squelched a smile. He’d wanted to get the words
thus
and
realm
into his answers regarding Driver. Sounded real high
tone and articulate. “Is it true he’s been trained as a Navy
SEAL?”

“
Yes. San Diego. Nineteen ninety-four.”
From the back
of the room. “But he was never deployed as a SEAL.”

“
You’d have to ask the navy about that.”
Elias Romero
nodded at the crowd. “
If you’ll excuse me . . . ,”
he
began, as the roar of shouted questions engulfed the room. Before the
assembled multitude had a chance to settle down, Romero ducked to his
right, stepped down off the dais and disappeared back through the
door from which he’d entered ten minutes earlier. He leaned heavily
against the inside of the door, closed his eyes and took several deep
breaths. “Iris,” he said. No answer. He opened his eyes. The
makeshift office area was empty. He cursed. Seemed like that damned
woman was always missing these days. No doubt about it. Things
settled down, things got back to normal . . . sure as hell, she was
gonna have to go.

Driver smoothed on one last piece of adhesive tape, then dropped
the scissors and the rest of the roll onto the bed. “That’s gonna
have to do,” he said. “You just keep eating those ibuprofen.
That’s as good as it’s going to get.”

Corso sat with his bandaged hand in his lap. The slug had gone
completely through the back of his hand and exited the center of his
palm. He’d nearly passed out when Driver had poured hydrogen
peroxide on both sides of the wound and cleansed the interior with a
cotton probe. The throbbing pain in his hand had caused his arm to go
numb. A handful of Aleve had dulled the pain somewhat but only enough
to keep him from crying out. What he needed was a doctor, but that
wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. He got to his feet and made
his way over to the other bed, where he first sat, then, leaving his
feet on the floor, let himself down onto his back in stages. They
were holed up in the Palm Garden Hotel and Casino, a crumbling
remnant of the days of Bugsy Siegel, about five miles north of
present-day Las Vegas. A peek out the back window, out over the
Dumpsters and the half dozen junkies who called the area home,
revealed the new skyline of the Strip barely visible through the
omnipresent desert haze.

Kehoe had lobbied hard for the brighter lights. The Bellagio or
the Luxor or something like that. They’d come out of the gun shop
with the better part of eleven thousand dollars and the cash was
burning a hole in Kehoe’s pocket. Driver had reasoned that the
bigger, fancier hotels were going to have larger and more effective
security forces and that their best bet was to find someplace on the
skids, someplace where security was perhaps playing second fiddle to
the power bill. After much wrangling, they’d settled on the Palm
Garden, a four-story pink stucco structure wedged between an Arby’s
and the North Vegas Animal Hospital. Bludgeoned by a merciless sun
and swirling winds, the paint was peeling so quickly it sounded like
rain.

With Driver behind the wheel, they’d driven the three hundred
miles from Phoenix without stopping, hitting the outskirts of Vegas
just after three-thirty in the afternoon. The digital sign on the
bank announced seventy-four degrees. Then a happy face. Then
seventy-four degrees. Corso sat slumped in the middle seat, holding
the T-shirt tight around his hand. While Driver went inside and got
them a pair of adjoining rooms, Corso and Kehoe sat in the cab of the
truck watching the valet parking attendants, listening to their
chatter as they scurried to and fro across the parking lot. Before
settling in, Driver had visited the strip mall up the street. Half an
hour later, he’d returned with a pair of black Nike gym bags,
groceries, painkillers and first-aid supplies. After carefully
cleaning Corso’s wound, he’d bandaged the damaged area with
professional expertise.

While Driver was gone, Kehoe, who’d taken over the room, had
gotten busy on the phone. The hooker had arrived about five minutes
after Driver returned. About the time Corso had stopped moaning and
groaning over Driver’s ministrations, the damp sounds of carnal
commerce began to seep into the room from next door.

“Kehoe ever wears himself out . . . you can be next, if you
want.”

Corso shook his head. “Not my cup of tea.”

“If you’re afraid of catching something . . .”

“There’s that for sure . . . but that’s not it.”

“Yeah . . . ,” Driver said. “Me neither.”

“I availed myself a couple of times when I was a kid,” Corso
said. “It just didn’t feel right to me. Like I was stealing money
from the poor box or something really shitty like that. Different
strokes, I guess.”

“I never have,” Driver said. “All those navy towns and shore
leaves and somehow I could never bring myself to . . . you know.”

“Probably for the best.”

“I always imagined what my mother would think.”

Corso checked Driver from the corner of his eye, looking for signs
of irony in a guy who’d just been party to innumerable deaths yet
was concerned about what his mother might think about him getting his
knob polished. If he was kidding, he wasn’t letting on.

On the TV a graphic announcing an imminent police bulletin rolled
across the bottom of the screen. Thinking it was about them, Corso
picked up the remote and adjusted the volume. Not so, though. Cut to
a press conference in Shep, Texas. Multiple murder suspects Harry
Delano Gibbs and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend, Heidi Anne
Spearbeck, had been apprehended in northern Nevada and now awaited
the results of an extradition hearing, scheduled for the following
morning. Seems Gibbs, having had his marriage proposal rebuffed at
gunpoint by Heidi Anne’s father, Sheldon, had returned several
hours later to dispatch the old man with a single bullet in the head,
before running off with his daughter.

It was a week before Sheldon’s decomposed body was discovered by
a fertilizer salesman who’d stopped by for a visit. By that time,
Gibbs and Spearbeck had already cut a wide swath of crime and
killings across the Southwest, leaving a grocer and his wife dead
over what authorities figured to be no more than sixty-five dollars,
killing Texas Ranger Wade Ott Rufin as he attempted to arrest them at
a motel in Vici, Oklahoma, and holding more than seventy customers at
bay as they robbed the Pig and Pancake Truck Stop way out in the
panhandle by Guymon, Oklahoma. In addition to these confirmed
atrocities, the pair were now suspected in another half dozen equally
grievous felonies. Sheriff Mace Walker of Harris County, Texas,
wanted everyone to know it was safe to go outdoors again as the pair
had been brought to bay, that justice had prevailed and that peace
reigned once again in the land.

“Heartwarming,” Corso said.

Driver pointed at the television. The graphic on the screen read
Musket, Arizona. Meza Azul Correctional Institute. Driver grabbed the
remote from the end table and turned it up louder. The new graphic
said the guy in the brown suit was one Dallin Asuega, an executive of
the Randall Corporation. While Driver fumbled with the volume
control, the screen split in two, Asuega on the left, Kehoe’s mug
shot on the right. Then Corso and Driver. They laid it out. The whole
nine yards. Life stories. Criminal records. Armed and dangerous. Do
not attempt to apprehend. Back with more after . . .

Melanie Harris surveyed Main Street, Musket, Arizona, and
shuddered. “Anybody ever finds me living here,” she thought,
“they should put a bullet in my head.” Everything in that
single-story fake adobe look. Built around a little town square,
flagpole and all. Except that’s probably not what they called it in
Arizona. Probably had some tongue-rolling Spanish name. The oversized
American flag popped and snapped in the stiff, swirling breeze.

Marty was up the street somewhere meeting their contact. Getting
more info. Stuff they presumably could use on this week’s show. She
hoped it was good. Not as gory as last night’s tape but something
hot and exclusive. The number of calls she’d fielded from the
network told her they were more popular than they’d been in a long
while. In Hollywood, you could always judge your status by the number
and quality of people who belatedly returned your calls. In the far
distance, out beyond the greenery of the park, out beyond the cookie
cutter housing development, out where the desert sought every day to
reclaim its sovereignty, a dust devil whirled madly about the sky,
brown and menacing, full of loose G.M. Ford dirt and desert debris.
It twirled and snaked over the ground, taking this, leaving that, as
it made its way west across what she was told was once a vast inland
ocean.