The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (5 page)

“Take off your boots, your pants, and your jacket,” Lundquist said.

Milton did as he was told, folding the garments and leaving them over the back of the chair. Lundquist opened a closet that Milton had not noticed and brought out an orange prison-issue jumpsuit marked MICH. DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. He handed it over and, as he bent to step into the legs, the deputy whistled in surprise.

“Goodness,” he said, “that’s some tattoo.”

Milton had a pair of angel’s wings inked across his shoulders and all the way down his back. He shrugged.

“Must’ve hurt, up on your shoulder blades like that. Close to the bone and all.”

“I was drunk at the time. Didn’t feel a thing.”

Milton pulled the jumpsuit up to his waist, slipped his arms through, and pulled it up past his shoulders.

“All right. In you go.”

Milton stepped into the cell and moved aside as Lundquist closed the door and locked it. Milton looked around: there was a cot with a thin mattress and a toilet. Previous inmates had gouged out their initials in the mortar between the blocks in the wall.

“You eaten?”

“No,” he said.

“Rules say we got to get you a meal. Three squares and a cot, that’s the deal. We don’t have enough guys staying overnight for us to have a kitchen, plus there’s no way you’d want me cooking for you, but I can order takeout. You like burgers?”

“Sure.”

“They do a good burger at Johnny’s. Bacon and cheese, all the trimmings. You want, I’ll get them to bring one over.”

“Thanks.”

“You want a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?”

“Please.”

“How do you take it?”

“White, one sugar.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Milton sat down on the cot and stretched his shoulders. This would be fine. At least it was clean, maybe even cleaner than the hotel. And he had stayed in far worse places.

That’s right,
he thought.

You got lucky. This could have been a lot worse.

You go into bars and bad things happen.

He sat back, pulled his legs up onto the cot, and leaned against the wall. He would stay here tonight, and, with luck, the sheriff would be able to see to it that he could leave tomorrow morning. He would go to the hotel, collect his pack and his rifle, and set off again, back towards the west. He had been working his way to Minneapolis. Morrissey was playing a gig there in a couple of weeks. He was a fan, and it immediately conjured memories of the time he had spent in the regiment. Music had always been a trigger for his memories, and, as he sat in the cell, miles and years and a hundred murders away from that time, he remembered the tunes he had listened to on that old battered Walkman: The Smiths, his solo stuff. He remembered sitting on his bunk in the barracks, not so different from this, treating the blisters that he had collected during the brutal Fan Dance across Pen y Fan, the highest peak in the Brecon Beacons, and listening to his music.

Selection. Five months of Hell. Ninety percent of the men failed. Two of them died.

Milton had been one of the ten percent.

Milton heard Lundquist coming back down the stairs. He backed through the door, two mugs of coffee in his hands. “White with sugar,” he said, handing one of the mugs through the bars of the cell. “Burger’s on its way. Twenty minutes.”

“Thanks. Good of you.”

He waved that away. “‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’”

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s Hebrews.”

“Oh—the Bible?”

“That’s right. Pretty good rule to live your life by.”

“I’m not really a Bible type,” Milton admitted. “And you don’t need to worry about entertaining an angel. I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that.”

Lundquist laughed. “I’m sorry. Lester’s always telling me to dial down on the scripture. I know it’s not for everyone.”

The man paused on the other side of the bars, bringing his mug to his lips and taking a sip.

“What part of England are you from?”

“The south.”

“I went over there, five years ago.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh, trip to Europe. My ancestors are Danish. Came over here in the last century, thousands of them, thought they could make a fortune working the mines. Cornishmen, then the Irish, Germans, French Canadians, Finns, Danes, Swedes. You know, turn of the century, three quarters of the families here were born overseas. How about that?”

Milton sipped the hot, sugary coffee.

“How’d that turn out for them, though? Maybe good enough at the time, but now, everything’s closed, and all we got’s the tourists. And when we get ignorant types like those city boys you taught a lesson, well, I gotta ask myself is it really worth it. You know what I’m saying?”

Milton shrugged.

“What do you make of it, John? What’s happening to the country?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look at those government types in Washington, getting fat off the federal teat; they don’t give two shits about what happens to the people here. Look at Detroit, last time I went down there the place was dying on its feet, and they don’t do nothing about it.”

He flashed with a sudden anger that cut through his amiable exterior. Milton finished the drink and handed it back through the bars. “I don’t know, Deputy. Don’t know if I’m qualified to comment.”

“Sorry, I know I’m going on about it again. My wife, Patti, she’s always telling me that I’m stuck in the past like I’m some kind of dinosaur. Maybe she’s right, I don’t know. All I can say is that you work as a policeman as long as I have and you start to notice how things are getting worse. But I’ll leave it there.” He flicked two switches, and the strip light cut out to be replaced by dim lights that were set in sconces in the wall. “You want anything, you just need to holler. I’ll be upstairs. I’ll bring your food down when it gets here.”

Lundquist shut the door behind him, and Milton listened to the sound of his footsteps as he climbed the stairs. He heard the ground floor door shut and the sound of the key as it turned in the lock.

SPECIAL AGENT Ellie Flowers rode back to the hotel with her partner, Orville Clayton. She got out of the Denali and ran across the parking lot with a copy of
USA Today
held over her head to try to shield herself from the rain. It didn’t work, the newsprint going soggy within seconds and then little rivulets running through the creases and folds and dripping down onto her.

Orville ran after her. She waited until she was inside and then she turned. There he was, dodging the puddles in those ridiculous five-hundred-dollar shoes with the lifts in the heels that were made for him especially. Back in the office, Joey Trimble said Napoleon used to wear shoes with lifts in them like that, so Napoleon had quickly become his nickname. Orville hated it, hated everything that reminded him that he was five eight and not the six foot he listed on his profile at Match.com. Ellie had never cared how tall he was, but she had learned quickly that he was touchy about it, so she never brought it up. Didn’t mean that she didn’t find the sight of him as he splashed through the water amusing, especially since they had just had an argument.

She was tempted to just go back to her room, without saying goodnight, but her father hadn’t brought her up to be petty, so she waited for him in the lobby.

“Fucking rain,” Orville said, the water plastering his thinning hair to his crown. “The sooner we get out of this place, the better.”

“Goodnight,” she said.

He looked confused, as if he had already forgotten that they had argued and he had expected her to come back to his room like the night before like nothing had happened. “You don’t want to come in?”

“Not tonight,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“This is about what you said?”

“No, it’s about your attitude.”

“What about it?”

She was tired. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

“What’s wrong with my attitude?”

“Goodnight.”

She reached across and touched him on the shoulder. She thought about kissing him on the cheek, decided against it, and then smiled a little sadly at him and went back to her room.

SHE LIT a cigarette and dialled a number on her phone.

“Hi, it’s Ellie Flowers, just leaving a message to say that I won’t be coming back to the office tomorrow. I know, yeah, that’s what I said. Orville’s coming back. I’m going to stick around for a couple days extra. Okay?”

She pressed the remote to switch on the TV, flicked through the channels, but couldn’t find anything she liked: ads, a show about monster trucks, a comedy that had stopped being funny about six seasons ago. She took out the phone again and dialled another number.

“Ellie?”

“Ryan. You busy?”

“Never too busy for my little sister. Where are you?”

“Up in Michigan. The Upper Peninsula.”

“With the Yoopers? Too much fun.”

“This weather’s nuts. It’s hardly stopped raining.”

“What you doing up there?”

“Those boys who’ve been robbing banks? There was a potential lead. Just a maybe, not even that, but Orville wanted to check it out.”

“You up there with him?”

“Don’t start.”

“What you call him again?”

“Napoleon.”

“That’s right, Napoleon. He’s up there, too?”

“Yes, he’s here. Mostly why I’m in a bad mood.”

“He still married?”

“Don’t.”

She finished the cigarette and fished another from the pack. The sign on the door said there shouldn’t be any smoking in the room, but the place was a dump, and she doubted that anyone had ever taken any notice of it.

“So what’s he done?”

“I think he’s got it in his head that I liked him because he was older, like it was some kind of father-figure thing, except it wasn’t, never was anything like that. Problem is, now he’s got that fool idea in his head, and he thinks he can dispense advice like he really is my old man. He’s been doing it tonight, and I’ve had just about enough of it.”

Her brother’s tone changed, becoming less frivolous. “You know what I think about that whole thing.”

“Don’t…”

“I’m not lecturing, Ellie. Just saying.”

She sucked down the smoke, listening to the rain beating on the motel window. “Fuck it, what does it matter? I’ve kind of decided it’s all over.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. It was a dumb idea.”

“You know what I think about that.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Keep your chin up, little sis.”

She inhaled and exhaled again, blowing smoke up at the ceiling. “I saw a hell of a thing tonight. We were in the local bar, talking to the girl who brought us up here, and these two guys got into a brawl with one of the other guys there. One of them was as big as a bear, mean looking, but this other guy kicked the shit out of both of them.”

“Sounds like my kind of bar.”

“I’m serious, Ryan. Two punches—one, two—they’re on the floor. Sheriff arrests this guy, though, but doesn’t do a thing about the others even though they started it.” Headlights from a car, pulling into the lot, glared through the open curtains and painted a narrow stripe across the ceiling. She heard passing traffic on the call, too. “So what are you doing?”

“I’m in the car. Outside the apartment of this shit-bird a client’s had me tailing for the best part of a week. You wouldn’t believe this guy. He’s a serious douchebag. She thinks he’s been messing around with his secretary, and she was one hundred percent right about that. Thing is, he’s been schtupping the Pilates instructor from his gym at the same time as the other one. She’s with him now. I’m just waiting for them to come out so I can snap them. Then I’m going home to drink some beer.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“Like I said, the bureau ever gets to be too much, you know I could always use an extra set of hands down here.”

“Tempting.”

“I’m serious.”

She took a beat, not wanting to sound like she was dissing the business that he had built down there. “Thanks, but, you know… no. This is nothing with Orville. I should never have let it happen, but now that it has, I’m just going to have to put on my big girl pants and get it over with. And I will. Soon as we get back into Detroit, it’s done.”

“When are you going back?”

“He’s going tomorrow. I’m going to stick it out another couple of days.”

“Why? You think your boys are up there?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably not. Almost certainly not. But there’s something I can’t put my finger on. I need to dig around a little.”

“Well, if you want a little distraction right now, the Steelers kick off the second half in ten minutes.”

“Shit. I totally forgot.” Ellie had been a Browns fan when they had been little kids while Ryan had always pulled for the Steelers. Ever since college, they always had fifty bucks riding on those two divisional matches each year. “Score?”

“Browns are trailing ten-zip. Big Ben’s carving them up. Double or nothing, make it interesting?”

“Fuck it. Go on.”

“Later, sis.”

“Later.”

Ryan was thirty-three, two years older than her. He had been an all-state linebacker in his teens, and there was talk of a full scholarship to Penn State until a defensive lineman rolled up his knee and tore all sorts of ligaments that were never meant to be torn. He’d bummed around for a couple of years, worried Ellie with a string of unsuitable women and what was pretty obviously a drinking problem, until he’d accepted that digging his nose into other people’s affairs was his family inheritance and set up Ryan Flowers Investigations, Inc., working out of Melvindale, just south of Detroit. It was a solid business, doing work for insurance companies for the most part, getting evidence on drivers who arranged to have someone crash into the back of them and then claimed for whiplash or other injuries that couldn’t be disproved until Ryan snapped candid pictures of them shooting hoops, out for a run, or picking up their little girl and flinging her into the air. The claims were always dropped pretty quickly after that, and Ryan pocketed a nice percentage of what would have been paid out. He’d made enough for a down payment on a two-bedroom apartment in Riverview, a second-hand Lexus, and cable TV. He appeared to be happy with all of that.