The Outsider (James Bishop 4) (43 page)

They were approaching a four-way intersection with a red traffic light. There was no other traffic. Bishop drove straight on through without slowing.

‘So why were they holding on to her?’

‘They were waiting for her husband to regain consciousness, she said. She didn’t know why, but if I had to guess, I’d say they were going to put pressure on him to confess that
he
was the inside man right from the start.’

‘Why?’

‘So Hartnell can protect the real source of the leak, I imagine. And since he wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to protect another lowly marshal, it has to be somebody pretty high up on the food chain. Somebody who can still be useful to Hartnell somehow. And I also remember Delaney telling me she was reporting straight to Director Christiansen on this job, which kind of narrows things down.’

‘You mean the director of the US Marshals Service? The man at the top?’

Bishop just shrugged.

‘Jesus.’ Strickland paused, then said, ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Say Lomax wakes up, does what they want and ’fesses up. What then? Those two bozos back there aren’t about to let the wife go, are they? She knows too much.’

‘No, they’d have wasted her. Without a doubt.’

‘So how can that work then? As soon as Lomax finds out his wife’s dead, he retracts his confession and it’s back to square one.’

Bishop shook his head. ‘Once you confess to a major felony, it’s not so easy to go back on it. Especially when all the pieces fit together so nicely. And Lomax actually
did
sabotage the safe house, don’t forget. And anyway, how would he ever know for sure that his wife’s dead? Those two back there weren’t likely to tell him, were they?’

‘But the empty house …’

‘… could mean anything,’ Bishop finished. ‘Everybody knew how suspicious Lomax was in regards to his wife. As far as the feds are concerned she could have simply gotten tired of her husband’s attitude and decided to take off. Happens all the time.’

The headlights of an oncoming vehicle lit Strickland’s face as he turned to Bishop. ‘After leaving her pet dog to starve to death in the basement?’

‘That’s been known to happen too.’

‘Well, you sure screwed up their plans on that score. Those two are dead, the wife’s still alive, and her husband’s in the clear once he wakes up. So now Hartnell’s got something else to worry about. I like that.’

So did Bishop. Lomax had told him on Monday that he was like a loose screw rattling around, messing up the works. Turned out he was right, just not in the way he intended.

There were some overhead signs just up ahead. Bishop saw the next exit was for Route 37 and steered the vehicle into the far right-hand lane. It was 01.03. Four hours before the next phone call, and over two hundred miles still to cover.

Bishop increased their speed.

At 02.32, Bishop was heading east on State Road 44 when he heard something interesting on the CB. For much of the journey he’d been listening to static and white noise, interspersed with the occasional snatch of random conversation from nearby operators. But then he caught the middle of a conversation with some guy complaining about a ‘…
shitload of advertising on the 44, east a Connersville. Just cost me half-a-goddamn-hour, and I was already behind. Assholes
.’

Checking there was nothing behind them, Bishop took his foot off the gas and the vehicle began to slow. He knew that, in CB terminology, ‘advertising' meant a police car with its lights on. And the speaker, who sounded like a trucker carrying a heavy load, was saying there were a lot of them. Which could only mean a roadblock. And Connersville was the next town along this route, less than three miles away from their current position.

Close. Very, very close.

Pulling over to the side of the road, Bishop listened as another voice came back with, ‘
I hear you, hoss. They sure know how to screw up a workin’ man’s timetable.’

‘
You got that right, man,’
the first guy said
. ‘I tell you, it’s gettin’ harder and harder to earn an honest buck in this damn country. Assholes, every goddamn last one of ’em
.
Next time I’ll …’
Then the signal began to fade out, gradually morphing into static again.

‘Trouble?’ Strickland asked.

‘Roadblock just up ahead, by the sounds of it,’ Bishop said. As far as he was concerned the CB radio had just paid for itself. He checked the GPS and quickly came up with an alternate route that would take them past the problem area. Checking his rear-view and seeing nothing behind them, Bishop made a U-turn and then took them west for a few hundred yards until he spotted the turn-off he wanted. It would add another ten or twelve miles to their journey, but they were making pretty good time, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Strickland soon lapsed into silence again. He’d been that way since Breeden, but then the man had plenty to think about. The most important of which was that in three more hours he’d see his son again, probably for the last time.

Bishop had told Strickland that he wanted both father and
son alive at the end of this, but he knew how unlikely that was. He was under no illusions, and saw reality for what it was. And with the odds so stacked against them, Bishop knew that just getting Barney back safe and sound would put them well ahead of the game. Anything over and above that would be verging on the miraculous. And he’d never believed in miracles. Not even as a child.

Leaving Strickland alone with his private thoughts, Bishop kept his eyes on the twin beams of light spreading out before them and just drove.

At 04.22, they were still travelling east on the little-used State Road 122 when they crossed the state line into Ohio. At least that’s what the GPS said, and Bishop had no reason to doubt it.

‘We’re in Ohio,’ Bishop said, breaking the silence for the first time in an hour.

Strickland rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Didn’t you live here when you were working for Hartnell?’

‘Well, we lived in Lancaster,’ Strickland said. ‘That’s about a hundred and fifty miles east of here. But that was only for the last couple of years. Before that, I operated out of Cincinnati, where we had a little place out in the suburbs. Why?’

‘So you don’t know this western section of the state all that well?’

‘Not all that well.’

‘Good.’ Bishop nodded, satisfied. As ever, all information was useful, and that little fact could very well be made to work in their favour when the time came.

Which would be just over half an hour from now.

At 04.53, they were heading north on County Road 25A when Bishop spotted the lights of an all-night Marathon gas station about a half-mile up ahead. Since they were down to a quarter tank, he reduced his speed.

Strickland was still looking at the cell phone in his hand. He’d taken it from his jacket pocket ten minutes before and had been staring at it ever since, waiting for the call.

Bishop turned into the station entrance and saw it was a pretty basic set-up, with a steel canopy overlooking two pumps, and a small one-storey shop set further back. Inside the store, the night guy was sitting next to the cash till, staring at a portable TV. The only other vehicle was a sedan parked to the right of the building, which was probably his. There were no other customers.

Pulling up next to the first pump, Bishop killed the engine and got out. He went into the store, gave the guy a twenty, and walked back out again. The guy had barely glanced away from the TV the whole time.

As he was filling the tank with unleaded, Strickland got out of the car and came over. He was frowning at the cell phone in his hand. ‘We just got some kind of text. I can’t figure it out, though. And there’s a phone number with it, so it can’t be from Callaway.’

‘Let’s see. Take over for me.’ They switched places. As Strickland continued filling the tank, Bishop took the phone and looked at the number first, and then the text message. The message read,
Good to go
.

Bishop pressed Reply and keyed in
Posit?
He pressed Send.

Strickland said, ‘So you know who it’s from?’

‘I know.’

Strickland waited for more. When none came, he said, ‘So? You want to fill in the blanks for me?’

‘Not yet. It might all come to nothing anyway.’

The cell phone chirped as a reply came back. Bishop opened up another message. It was just as brief as the first one:
Penthouse
.
360
.

Nodding to himself, Bishop keyed in his reply –
Gear?
– and sent it off. Less than twenty seconds later, a reply came back:
ATCO
.

‘ATCO?’ Strickland said, looking over Bishop’s shoulder as he gripped the pump. ‘What the hell does
that
mean?’

‘It means
all taken care of
,’ Bishop said.

‘Huh? What’s taken care of? What are you talking about? And while I’m at it, just where the hell
are
we anyway? I just checked the GPS and all of a sudden we’re heading north when we should be—’

Strickland stopped mid-sentence at the shrill ring of the cell phone in Bishop’s hand. Not another text message, but a call.
The
call. The one they’d been driving towards these past two days.

It was 04.59.

This time Bishop answered.

He brought the phone to his ear and Callaway’s familiar smug voice said, ‘So who am I talking to this time?’

‘The other one,’ Bishop said.

‘Uh-huh. So where are you?’

‘At an all-night gas station in west Ohio, somewhere on US 127, five or six miles north of Greenville.’ Strickland was frowning deeply at the obvious lie. Bishop ignored him and said, ‘Let me talk to the boy, make sure he’s all right.’

‘No can do. He’s not with me at the moment.’

‘Get him then. Even if it’s only by phone. I need to hear his voice before we can go any further.’

‘Relax, he’s fine. You think I’d risk queering the deal this late in the game?’

‘I’m not here to guess what you may or may not do. Just get hold of him, right now.’

Callaway sighed. ‘Like playing hardball, don’t you, pal? Okay, wait one. I’ll see what I can do.’

The line went silent. Strickland removed the dripping nozzle from the gas tank and placed the hose back in the dispenser. Bishop got in the driver’s seat, shut the door and put the phone on loudspeaker. Strickland got in the other side.

Less than half a minute later Callaway came back on and said, ‘Okay, I got him on another line, so make it quick.’

‘You there, son?’ Bishop asked.

‘Yeah, I’m here,’ a tinny, high-pitched voice replied. Even one step removed, it still sounded like Barney, but Bishop needed to be sure.

‘Answer a question for me. When we first met a few days ago, we compared Tetris records and you told me you couldn’t get past a certain amount of lines. What was that figure you gave me?’

A brief pause, then, ‘It was five thousand.’

‘That’s the one. So how are you? Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m all right, I guess. You and Dad are still coming to get me, aren’t you?’

‘We sure are, son,’ Strickland said. ‘We’re just sorting out the final details now.’

Callaway’s clear voice came back on the line. ‘Time’s up. As you can see we’re keeping up our end. So you satisfied?’

‘I’m satisfied he’s healthy,’ Bishop said. ‘Now let’s get down to it.’

‘Okay, now we got a nice little place set up for the exchange, and I figure you should be able to get to it within the hour without too much trouble. You can come up with your own route if you want, but from Greenville you head east on Route 36 for about fifty miles before you come to a town called Urbana. And at the northernmost tip of this town, there’s a big industrial estate. There’s still a couple of factories operating out there, but most of the places have gone out of business so there’ll be nobody to bother us. Now the place you’ll want is an old warehouse with a big faded sign on the side with the words,
Big Discounts on—
’

‘Forget it,’ Bishop interrupted.

There was a brief pause. ‘Say what, friend?’

‘I said forget it. Forget this warehouse, forget Urbana altogether. We need to decide on a new location or the deal’s off.’

‘Okay, pal, I’ve given you all the leeway I could up till now, but you’re really starting to piss me off.’

‘Come on,
pal
,’ Bishop said. ‘You must have suspected I’d say no to whatever location you came up with, so don’t act all shocked. Not only have you got access to as much backup and hardware as you feel is necessary, but you’ve had two full days to prepare for our arrival. Now call me cynical, but somehow I can’t see the two of us lasting too long once we show our faces at this warehouse, can you?’

Callaway’s silence was answer enough. Then he said, ‘So what do you want?’

‘I simply want us to meet at an alternative location, some place where you haven’t had time to arrange a welcome party for us.’

‘And you just happen to have the perfect location in mind, right?’

‘No, that part I’ll have to leave up to you. You know this state. I don’t. My only stipulation is that it has to be somewhere my associate here is also familiar with, since neither of us is prepared to go into this completely blind. And obviously it needs to be somewhere both parties can reach before the imposed deadline. Unless you’re willing to extend it.’

‘No extensions. My employer’s very specific about that.’

‘Okay, then. So the ball’s now in your court.’

A pause. Then Callaway said, ‘Let me think on it.’

The phone went silent.

Strickland opened his mouth to say something, but Bishop quickly shook his head and he clamped it shut again. It was all down to Callaway now. Bishop had set the parameters, but the actual location had to come from Callaway alone. Bishop already knew the guy would want a place as remote as the other one, and that was fine. He also knew that if he or Strickland dared to make a further suggestion, Callaway would instantly nix the idea out of hand. So best to say nothing.