Not that any of her actually believed it, the likelihood of such a thing too great to be ignored.
Especially given that his cell phone had come on just a moment before.
“How much you want to bet he did something stupid and got himself arrested?” she asked, the question asked in a low tone, one that didn’t expect an answer, wasn’t surprised when none came her way.
“Pull in behind the cruiser,” she said, extending a hand toward the sole vehicle sitting in the driveway.
Doing as instructed, Colvin pulled to a stop, the gearshift barely into position before Lipski was out.
The first thing to greet her was the smell of charred rubber, her feet crunching over the splintered remains of the door. Giving it nothing more than a tertiary glance, she strode straight for the front door, a new set of smells assaulting her senses.
Smells she was all too familiar with after a career working as a marshal.
Glancing to Burrows behind her, her mouth hooked into a grimace as she stepped over the threshold into the house, her eyes battling to refocus in the dim light.
From somewhere deep inside, she could hear movement, the shifts of the house punctuated by the rattle of a plastic bag.
“Hello? U.S. Marshals!”
At the sound of her voice, the noises fell away, replaced by heavy footsteps, the source of which appeared a moment later.
Standing no taller than Lipski’s nose, everything about the man seemed bulbous, from his midsection to his mustache. Red-faced and sweating, he leered at her a moment before asking, “Who the hell are you?”
Annoyance crept into Lipski, both at his tone and his pretending he hadn’t heard her announce them a second before.
Jurisdictional turf issues were the sort of thing that usually got blown out of proportion, most local authorities realizing their own limitations and being all-too-happy to hand over a scene.
Unless of course their ego got in the way.
Pulling her badge from her waist, Lipski flashed it, “Deputy Marshal Lipski, Marshal Burrows, U.S. Marshal Service.”
“Marshals?” the man asked, his face twisting up. “These your guys?”
Looking a question to Burrows, Lipski’s face held the expression as she took another step forward, the scent in the air growing stronger.
“Guys?” she asked. “As in, plural?”
Rolling his eyes at her, the man shifted to the side, waving a hand for them to enter. “Come on in, have a look, Marshals.”
Choosing to ignore the connotation, the underlying meaning it held, Lipski slid past him, sweat and body odor rolling out in a wave, mixing with the assorted smells already in the home. Moving as quick as she could, she stepped through the kitchen and into a rear living room, a second deputy standing there.
Younger than the first, he nodded as she entered, stepping back toward the wall, obvious he had no desire to be inside.
With her heart pounding, nervous energy roiling within her, she shifted her gaze down to the bloodied bodies of two young men spread on the carpet.
At a glance, it was clear they were dead, parts of them scattered across the room.
Just as obvious was the fact that neither of them was Tim Scarberry.
Letting out the tiniest sigh of relief, Lipski nodded to the deputy before turning and moving back out into the kitchen. Looking to Burrows still in the doorway to the front room, she shook her head, a slight relaxation of his facial muscle revealing the same reaction she’d had a moment earlier.
“They yours?” the sheriff asked.
“No,” Lipski said, striding to the far side of the room, getting as far from the various smells as possible, before turning back to face him. “Anybody else present?”
Narrowing his eyes a bit, the man asked, “Like who?”
Inside of five minutes, already she could feel an intense dislike burning for the man before her, everything from his stance to his tone to his word selection rubbing her the wrong way.
“Fifteen minutes ago, the cell phone for a man we’ve been tracking became active at this address.”
To that, some of the previous hostility bled from the man, his face losing a bit of color as he looked over his shoulder to the deputy peeking out from the room behind him.
“What man?”
“I’m sorry, that’s strictly need-to-know right now,” Lipski said. “Have you seen anybody else here?”
For a moment, there was no response, the man maintaining his pose, looking between them.
Slowly, his head began to rock back, a faint smile appearing on his lips. “You guys are U.S. Marshals. You’ve lost a witness, haven’t you?”
The fingers on Lipski’s right hand curled into a ball, so tight she could feel it quivering, anticipation roiling through her.
“Again,” she said, pushing the words through gritted teeth, “need to know basis.”
Casting a second quick look over his shoulder, the man smirked, his stomach bouncing from the gesture. “Nope, we’re the only two men that have been here. And we damned sure didn’t turn on any cell phones.”
Twisting over a shoulder, Lipski glanced to Burrows. “Find it.”
Without a word, he disappeared back the way they’d come.
“Any idea who they are?” Lipski asked.
“Nope,” the man replied, again smirking at her. “A gunshot victim showed up over at Monroe County earlier today. He might be able to help you.”
Chapter Seventy-Four
The sun sat low in the rearview mirror, an orange disc that caused me to scrunch my eyes up tight to block it out.
Headed due east, there was no way for me to obstruct it completely, the thing sitting directly on our backside as we pushed across Georgia. Combining with the tension we were both already under, it kept us both bathed in sweat, despite the best efforts of the air conditioner to keep us cool.
Sometimes the body has a way of transcending modern technology.
Lifting the bottle of Gatorade from the middle console, I twisted the top off, letting a long pull slide down my throat. Even though my core felt like I had swallowed a coil of barbed wire, I knew I needed to force the fluids, to have another protein bar, to give my body what it needed.
It had been a hell of a day, another in a string that was scripted by the devil himself. Coupling with the extreme heat, it wouldn’t take much to zap my body of precious energy, leaving me vulnerable at the worst possible time.
Beside me, Lou seemed to be sipping at hers as well, the set of her jaw and the death grip she had on the bottle both indicating she wasn’t doing nearly as well.
Which was to be expected. Given the jurisdiction she worked in and the fact that she’d only been doing it a couple of years, this had to have been the most extreme thing she’d encountered.
A word that was apt for a variety of reasons.
“You know, you don’t have to do this,” I said. Reaching out, I lowered the fan on the air conditioner a notch so she could better hear me, the damn thing not doing a lot to cool us anyway.
Giving no response, Lou continued staring for a moment before slowly turning her head my direction.
“I could say the same to you.”
“You could,” I conceded, my eyebrows rising in kind, “but you’d be wrong. Those men killed the only family I have left. The men that employ them took every last semblance of a life I ever had.”
For a moment, it looked like she was going to counter, rattle off the ways my thinking was flawed, tell me that meeting violence with violence would only manage to get me killed or thrown in prison.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she said only, “You telling me I don’t have to do this is wrong as well. They tried to kill me, got me fired.”
Pausing, she shifted to face forward.
“Both noble reasons,” I said, “but both very recent. They don’t explain why you’ve been so willing to go along with me from-“
“Baxter,” she said, not bothering to look my way
, a single word that cut me off.
“I’ve been willing to go along since the moment you said Baxter.”
Unable to stop it, I felt my jaw drop open. Alternating glances between her and the road, it was if some doorway that had been shut in my head, something that had allowed me to see only my own hatred, finally opened.
And once it did, things began to line up, bits and pieces I’d missed, snippets I’d been ignoring, too wrapped up in my own shit.
“You want him too.”
Nodding her head slightly, Lou continued gazing straight ahead. “They listed it as a hunting accident, but come on. The Chief of Police just so happens to get struck by a stray bullet?”
Glancing down, she looked at her hands twisted into a ball on her lap, before continuing, “I guess after I went off to play ball and Eric Baxter went to jail, Vic started looking for new markets. Eventually, he settled on the reservation.”
Shame, dread, acrimony, all welled within me, adding to the hatred I so harbored for the man.
“Which inevitably caught the eye of my father.”
Still, I remained silent, letting her continue.
“Some say he was out, happened to stumble on a deal in progress,” Lou said. “Others speculated that he was followed. Either way didn’t matter.
“My father is dead, shot in the back by some son of a bitch looking to make a buck.”
Squeezing the wheel tight, I could see the knuckles of my left hand flash white, my wrath for the man and his operation somehow managing to ratchet up another level.
Something I would have never thought possible.
“And soon thereafter is when you decided to become a deputy.”
Nodding slightly, Lou said, “They wouldn’t hire me on the reservation, not knowing what had happened to my father, so I went to the closest possible precinct I could find. Figured I’d work my way over from there.”
Outside, the sun continued pushing a little lower in the evening sky, mercifully taking with it a few degrees of heat. Around us, interstate traffic flowed at a steady rate, oversized green signs along the side of the road telling us we had less than an hour before reaching our destination.
What would be waiting for us there, I had no way of knowing. Just as I’d told her a moment before though, whatever it was would be a welcomed change to hiding in Oregon, going through the motions of a life I never wanted.
Standing idly by as someone I cared about was tortured and murdered.
The Justice Department might have claimed what happened before as a victory, but to me, it was anything but. Sitting and listening to Lou’s story only drove that home, proving that while I might have helped in putting Eric away, I really hadn’t managed to slow the evil that he represented.
In essence, I had given up my life, and two good men had still lost theirs anyway.
The thought left a sour taste in my mouth, preceding a steely resolve that pushed through me, hardening me to whatever lay ahead.
The men that had burst through the garage doors earlier might be professionals, but they weren’t carrying what the two of us were.
“You say I don’t have to do this, I say you don’t have to, but we both know the truth,” Lou said, shifting her gaze over to look my way.
Matching it, I replied, “Damn right we do.”
Chapter Seventy-Five
To the casual observer, it could be said that a police detail had been sent to watch over the young man admitted earlier in the day for a gunshot wound. Given a separate room outside of the post-op ward following surgery, they were tucked away in a remote corner of the second floor, a far cry from the usual bustle of most hospital hallways.
To Deputy Marshal Abby Lipski, it was nothing more than window dressing, the officers assigned so clean they practically squeaked, acne and hair gel dotting both from the neck up.
The sort of people that were sent when their boss didn’t feel the assignment was worth handing off to anybody with actual value to the precinct.
Her annoyance was already high in the wake of her encounter with Sheriff Charbonneau and his lackey. It had spiked even further when finding Tim Scarberry’s cell phone in the front bushes, a spot that gave it even odds that it had been dropped or lost or stolen and ended up there, or had been purposely stowed by the man himself before fleeing.
What the latter could point toward, Lipski had spent most of the car riding over trying to determine.
Despite the visual carnage at the farmhouse, it seemed unlikely that Scarberry had committed the murders. The sheriff – for all his bumbling and false bravado – knew the name, never once giving the impression he thought there was involvement.
A pretty good sign, considering most people in his position would be quick to jump on the first option presented to them.
Making that supposition even stronger was the fact that the phone had been activated and left there, meaning it was more likely planted.
He would have to know he was being followed, more so that they would be watching for signs of life, the phone a tracking device to pull them straight in. Just why, she wasn’t sure, though she had a hunch something in the room ahead would give her the information she needed.
Given how important the young man in custody was, the insight he could soon be providing, the acrimony within Lipski spiked as she marched to the far end of the hall, Marshals Burrows and Marlucci fanned out behind her.
As they approached, the two young officers turned to face them, both standing as if they were some sort of flesh wall, meant to keep all intruders away.
A posture that did nothing to improve Lipski’s mood.
“Deputy Marshal Abby Lipski,” she said, flashing her badge before stowing it away. “Marshals Burrows and Marlucci. We need to speak with the young man inside.”
She didn’t bother adding the word now to the end, hopeful that her tone would be enough to make the point.
Judging by the glance shared between the two, she wouldn’t be so lucky.
Up close, the young men were nominally older than she’d originally suspected, though neither were within sniffing distance of thirty. Each fleshy and sporting crew cuts, the only discernible difference between them was one had blonde hair while the other brown.
A quick look to each of their breastplates showed them each to have the name Stanson, explaining the resemblance.
“We’ve been given strict instructions not to let anybody but hospital staff inside,” the blonde said, his lower jaw thrust out a bit, as if trying to appear tough.
A move that somehow raised the rancor Lipski felt a touch higher.
“Really?” she asked. “Even U.S. Marshals? A federal agency that outranks the-“ pausing, she peered at the patch on their shoulders a moment, “Knoxville Police Department by quite a wide margin.”
A touch of uncertainty crept over the young man’s features as he glanced to his colleague.
Matching the gaze, Brown Hair offered little more than a shrug.
“His, uh, doctor said he was sleeping,” the blonde managed.
Smirking, Lipski gave him a mirthless smile before pushing between them, each of her shoulders brushing against theirs as she passed through. Without waiting for a comment, having no desire to extend the ridiculous conversation a moment further, she opened the single door behind them and stepped inside.
The interior of the space looked like it was meant to house a long-term patient, the area much larger than usual recovery rooms, complete with an armchair and a small table for visiting family. In the corner above was a television, the screen dark, the light in the room subdued.
Most of what was visible was coming from the array of machines and monitors attached to the head of the single bed occupying most of the space. Stepping up alongside it, Lipski ran her gaze over each of them, seeing that the patient’s heart rate and breathing pattern seemed to be fairly stable, before lowering her attention to the person before her.
Not much older than the young men outside, most of his body w
as buried beneath blankets, a series of IV’s and wires hooked to him in various places.
While it wasn’t hard to imagine that as little as a few hours prior he had been thick and virile, his skin tan, now he looked nothing more than pasty, his body drawn in and weak in the wake of the earlier incident.
A fact she was there to exploit.
Leaning forward, she placed a hand on his arm, giving him a shake. Receiving nothing more than a flutter of eyelids, she added a second hand, jerking his arm several times, the entire bed jostling beneath her pressure.
Releasing her grip, she watched as his eyes again began to dance, this time opening wide enough for brown irises to peek through, glazed as they attempted to focus on her.
In unison, there was a noticeable uptick in the activities of the monitors above him, the sound of their beeping rising in kind.
Giving him no more than thirty seconds, Lipski reached out a single hand again, this time holding her thumb and middle finger a few inches from his face. Snapping them repeatedly before him, the sound loud, a distinct contrast to the steady throb of the monitors, she snapped, “Hey! You! Wake your ass up. We’ve got work to do.”
His eyes still no wider than slits, the young man shifted them toward her fingers, attempting to focus.
Based on the vacant look on his features, there was little actually managing to register with him.
“Dammit,” she whispered, casting a glance to the closed door behind her.
Right now, just a few feet away, her team was hopefully keeping the young officers at bay. If not, there would soon be a crew of doctors and nurses flooding in, demanding to know what she was doing, giving her the usual rigmarole about how this was a young man just out of surgery, needing his rest.
In sum total, a whole lot of runaround that she didn’t have time or energy for.
Somewhere – presumably nearby – was Tim Scarberry. And whatever he was after. And whoever had murdered those two boys back at the farmhouse.
For two days, she had been playing from behind, always two steps back, trying to figure out her next move. A journey that had taken her from her family, had drawn her across the country, dropped her into a sauna as hot as Hell itself. She was tired, she was angry, and she was ready for it to be over.
The Subway Page 26
