Safe and Sound (2 page)

The Jeep stopped. The headlights flashed once, twice. The rifleman relaxed the pressure. If the Jeep had not stopped and signaled, he would have put a .50-caliber bullet into the driver’s side window, then another into the engine block. Each of the rounds was the length of a man’s hand and traveled at three thousand feet per second. The rifle was originally designed to disable vehicles at extended ranges; against flesh and bone it wreaked terrible damage. The rifleman had seen the weapon cut a man in half at fourteen hundred yards.

As the Jeep approached the cabin below him, the rifleman saw a flash of movement at the edge of his field of vision. He swung the rifle to bear, his finger taking up the slack on the trigger again. The crosshairs centered on the back of a blond head. He tracked the figure of the small child running across the tiny yard in front of the cabin. She was about five years old, dressed in a light-blue flowered dress. The rifleman held the sight on the girl for a long second. He blew out the breath he had been holding and let off the trigger. He kept his eye to the sight and focused again on the red Jeep. It pulled to a stop in a cloud of dust. A man got out. The rifleman swung the scope to bear on the passenger side. No one got out. The driver was alone. The rifleman took his eye away from the scope. Only then did he wipe the sweat from his brow.

“Shit,” he said under his breath. A slight breeze blew up and he closed his eyes, savoring the coolness on his flesh. He opened them again and looked out over the vista before him.

He was standing in a rusting steel hut at the top of an abandoned fire watchtower. The tower itself was situated atop the highest of the local mountains. His vantage commanded a view of hundreds of square miles of forest that covered this part of the Blue Ridge. The ever-present haze that gave the mountains their name was light today. It obscured his view only slightly. The tower and the cabin at its base were far enough from the main road that even the muted whisper of traffic that most people tune out at the edge of hearing was gone. The silence of the ancient hills seemed to be a noise in itself, an emptiness that roared at him from the valleys below. In that enormous sound that was not a sound, the Jeep door’s opening and
closing seemed muffled, as did the voices that followed. One was high and childish, the other one deeper.

It was a voice the rifleman knew as well as his own. But it was only one voice and he had hoped to be hearing two. He sat down on the wooden floor of the tower and leaned against the steel side. The massive rifle lay across his lap.

The tower vibrated slightly as the man below mounted the steps that spiraled up from the bottom of the tower. The vibration grew stronger as the second man drew nearer, until his head poked up through the hole in the middle of the floor.

“Anything?” the rifleman said.

The second man shook his head. He climbed the rest of the way into the observation deck. He walked over to the side and looked out.

The second man was tall and broad-shouldered, in contrast to the rifleman’s wiry compactness. The second man was light-haired and fair-skinned, where the rifleman was dark-haired and Mediterranean-looking. Yet there was an indefinable similarity between them that occasionally led people to ask if they were related or even if they were brothers. In some senses, they were.

“We’re going to have to call DeGroot,” the rifleman said.

“He’s not going to like this,” the second man replied.

The rifleman lifted up slightly and fumbled in his pocket for a coin. He pulled one out. “Call it,” he said as he flicked the coin into the air with his thumb.

The second man smiled slightly. “Tails.”

The rifleman caught the rapidly spinning coin out of the air with one hand and slapped it down on his other wrist. He took his hand away. “Heads.”

The second man grimaced. “I’ll make the call. You get to feed the kid. I got groceries.”

The rifleman sighed. “Spaghettios again.”

“It’s all she eats.” The second man smiled tightly. “And we’ve eaten worse.”

***

The bells hanging on the doorknob jingled. Angela Hager looked up from the counter as Keller and Oscar entered the front door. Keller gave her a thumbs-up as he placed a sheaf of paperwork on the counter. She picked it up. Her hands were covered by soft black leather gloves.

“Did he give you any trouble?” she asked him.

“Nah,” Keller said. “But he didn’t do himself any good.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“He ran off a roof,” Oscar Sanchez said. “Trying to get away.”

She arched an eyebrow at them. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s a dumb-ass,” Keller said. “If he wasn’t a dumb-ass, he wouldn’t have run in the first place.”

“If you can spare me,” Oscar said, “I am going upstairs for a bit.”

Angela looked concerned. “Is the leg acting up?”

Oscar shrugged. “It hurts a bit, yes. But it is better than it was.”

“There’s some ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet,” she said. “Take some of that.” Oscar only nodded. He went up the stairs to the small apartment that he
shared with Angela. She winced slightly at the sound of his halting tread on the stairs. She turned to Keller. “So how’s he doing?” she asked.

“Not bad,” Keller said. “He still underestimates how crazy or stupid some of these jumpers can get.” He fished in his shirt pocket and pulled out the five that Oscar had handed him earlier. “By the way,” he said, “slip this back into his wallet sometime.”

She took the bill, looking at it quizzically. “What’s this for?” she asked.

“Oscar didn’t think Edward would be stupid enough to try and run off a roof to get away. I bet five bucks that he would. But I was just doing it to make a point.”

Angela tried to hand the bill back to him. “It won’t work,” she said. “He’ll know. He knows exactly how much money he has. To the penny.”

Keller shrugged. “He needs it more than I do,” he said. “What with trying to get his immigration problems straightened out. He’s got a good lawyer, and good lawyers cost money.”

She grimaced. “You got that right,” she said. She sat down in the chair behind the counter and massaged her temples as if her head hurt. “And he’s gotten back to the idea of bringing his sons here from Colombia. And that’s going to cost another fortune.” She shook her head. “But you know how he is. He made a bet. He lost. If you try to give it back, he’ll think you’re patronizing him. And he’ll be impossible to live with for days.”

Keller came around the counter and sat down. “So how do you feel about having his kids here?” he said.

She gave a short, sharp laugh. “Boy, there’s a can of worms.”

“Sorry,” Keller said. “If you don’t want to…”

“No, no,” she said. “That’s not what I meant.” She looked down at her hands. “You mind if I take these off?” she said. “I’m roasting.”

“You know you don’t have to ask me,” Keller said softly.

She looked up and smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “Well, I’m still working out exactly where we stand, now that…”

“Now that you’re with someone else,” he said. “Well, we’re still friends,” Keller said. “I hope.”

“Yeah,” she said. “We still are.” She began pulling the gloves off as she spoke, exposing the web of burn scars that covered the backs of her hands. “Anyway. He’s been talking about it off and on. He misses his boys and he worries about them. But a couple of weeks ago there was a news story on that Spanish-language station he listens to. A young boy got kidnapped in Bogotá.”

“It’s not like that’s anything new in Colombia,” Keller observed.

“Yeah, but this one really got to him. See, he’d always sort of assumed that it was just the kids of rich people who got snatched and held for ransom. But these kidnappers made a mistake. They got the wrong target. Instead of the rich kid they thought they were getting they got the maid’s son.” She shuddered. “When they discovered their mistake, they slit the boy’s throat.”

Keller’s face darkened. “So it hit him. Anyone’s vulnerable.”

She nodded. “It’s making him crazy. So…” She fell silent.

“So you can’t say anything about the way you feel,”

Keller said. “If you put up any resistance at all…”

She finished the sentence for him. “If I put up any resistance at all, I feel like a complete selfish bitch.”

“Well, you’re not,” Keller said.

“Aren’t I?” she said, her voice bitter. “They’re his sons, Jack. He’s got every right to want to see them grow up. To see them grow up safe. And I’m supposed to stand in the way of that because I’m worried that I won’t be able to hack it? That I’ll be a lousy stepmother to them? Or that I just won’t be able to stand having teenage boys around my apartment?” There was another silence before she spoke again. “You know the last thing my husband said to me before he shot himself?” She paused, took a deep breath. “I was lying there on the rug, both legs broken, the house beginning to burn down around me. He dropped that fucking baseball bat he’d just beaten me bloody with and pulled out his gun. I thought he was going to shoot me. I was praying he’d shoot me so I wouldn’t have to burn to death. Instead, he looked at me and said, ‘None of this would have happened if you’d just agreed to have kids.’ ” She slammed her hand down on the counter. It made a sound like a gunshot in the silence. “Like I was going to bring a child into a house with that psychopath. I couldn’t protect myself. How was I going to protect—” She stopped, drew a deep shuddering breath as she got herself under control.

Keller got out of his chair. He knelt by hers and took her scarred hand in his. “You need to tell him this, Angela,” he said softly. “He needs to know how you feel. Because it’ll come out. Somehow. No one knows that better than me.”

She smiled down at him, ran her free hand through Keller’s hair before putting it on top of his hand. “Ahhh, Keller,” she said. “Why did I let you get away?”
She let go and waved off the response. “Don’t answer that. I know why.” She smiled sadly. “And now it’s too late. We’ve got other people in our lives.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “And speaking of late,” she said, “you’d better get a move on if you’re going to make it to Fayetteville in time to see Marie.”

He stood up slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “But remember what I said.”

“I will,” she said. “I’ll talk to him.” She stood up. “Things easier between you two now?”

“A little,” Keller said. He didn’t elaborate.

“How’s her new business going?” she said.

“Picking up,” Keller replied. “She said she needed my help on something. I’ll call if I’m going to be gone long.”

“No worries,” Angela said. “Most of our clients have been pretty well behaved lately. Maybe it’s your reputation, since you’ve been on TV and all.”

He made a face. “Great. Thanks to TV, I have a reputation as a total wacko.”

She laughed. “Yeah, but damn few people want a total wacko like you coming after them. Hey, you use what you’ve got.” She gave Keller a kiss on the cheek. “Say hey to Marie for me.”

CHAPTER TWO

Keller pulled the Crown Victoria into one of the angled parking spaces along Hay Street. The broad sidewalks near the Cumberland County Courthouse were lined with older buildings. The Hay Street area had been populated with strip clubs and streetwalkers catering to horny soldiers far from home for the first time until a city cleanup program in the 1980s closed the venerable fleshpots like Rick’s Lounge and the Seven Dwarfs. But that didn’t eradicate vice in Fayetteville so much as relocate it. The strip joints had moved out to Bragg Boulevard and turned into upscale “gentleman’s clubs.” The hookers had moved indoors and into the Yellow Pages, where they euphemistically called themselves escorts. Now Hay Street was more friendly to “legitimate” business, but those businesses seemed slow to get the word. Some of the storefronts were deserted, but various civic organizations had brightened them up with brightly colored designs painted on the empty windows. Other storefronts held small law offices, clothing stores offering “urban wear,” and a pair of hair and nail salons.

Keller got out of the car. He stopped in front of another storefront. The lettering on this front window read JONES INVESTIGATONS. A bell attached to the door rang as Keller entered.

There was a pressed-wood reception desk with a phone and a computer in the front office. Keller had helped assemble the desk when Marie opened the office. It was empty; so far, there was no money to pay anyone to man it. He and Marie had also spent a weekend constructing the thin wall that separated the single office from
the reception area. Behind the desk, the door was open. Keller could hear voices coming from inside.

Marie was seated behind another cheap desk. The wall behind her was sparsely decorated: her newly framed PI license, a couple of pictures of her in her police uniform, and a picture of her with her father that Keller remembered last seeing at her house. A picture of Marie’s son, Ben, smiled at her from a frame on the desk.

The woman seated across from Marie stood up and extended a hand to Keller. She was tall and broad-shouldered. She looked to be in her early forties, but there was a single broad streak of pure white in her wavy dark brown hair. “Tamara Healy,” she said. Her voice was a contralto roughened by tobacco and whiskey. “I’m with Black, Diamond, and Healy.”

Keller took the hand. Her handshake was firm, like a man’s: straight up and down, one pump, two pumps, release. She sat back down. Keller took the other chair.