Behind where the display cases had stood, several wall racks had toppled, spilling their contents of laptop computers and digital cameras into the dreck that layered the floor. Clarence bent and fished out a Nikon Coolpix and a Canon PowerShot. Then he added a Dell Inspiron and an Apple MacBook Air to the loot in his canvas bag.
Raleigh joined him. “Ready,” he said. “Get some good stuff?”
“Lots.” He held the bag aloft, like an equatorial headhunter displaying a trophy or a Native American exhibiting the scalp of an enemy. “Should get us a several thousand bucks from a fence or pawn shop.”
The clatter of shifting debris drew their attention.
“Shit,” Clarence muttered.
The injured man apparently was not so badly hurt as first thought. He had pushed himself into a sitting position and now, through the dim light and floating particulates that filled the destroyed store, he stared at the bulging canvas sack.
“What are ya doin’?” he asked, the words sounding as if his mouth were stuffed with a wet rag. “Thought you guys were medics?”
Clarence lowered the bag. “We are, sir. This is just our back-up med kit.”
“Don’t think so,” the man said. “Saw ya helpin’ yourself to a couple a laptops.” He attempted to push himself up.
“Hold it, sir,” Clarence said. “Don’t do that. You’re hurt.”
He turned to his brother and whispered, “Okay, you know the drill.”
“Do we have to?” Raleigh asked, his voice low, a bit quivery.
“Of course not, brother,” Clarence hissed, “as long as you’re okay giving blow jobs to some 300-pound greaser and his Mexican Mafia amigos in McAlester.”
Raleigh sucked in a deep breath, expelled it, then aimed the beam of his MagLite into the injured man’s face.
The man raised his hand to shield his eyes from the blinding brilliance. Clarence, attempting to move quickly and silently through the debris, positioned himself behind the man, then fished through the rubble until he found the broken leg of a display case.
The man twisted around, trying to see what was happening.
Clarence knelt and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Just look straight ahead, sir. Watch the light. I’m sorry about this. But I promise it will be over in a fraction of a second.”
“Jesus Christ.” The man made a feeble effort to rise.
“Please,” Clarence said, his command harsh and sharp, “don’t.” He pushed the man down, stood, stepped back, and swung the broken leg like a baseball bat at the man’s head.
Chapter Four
SATURDAY, APRIL 13
THE MAN TURNED and lifted his hand into a defensive position, but the piece of wood wielded by Clarence knocked it away like a wind rush flattening grass and caught him full on the side of his face. A sound like a two-by-four thunking into a watermelon reverberated through the ruins of the store.
The victim toppled. Raleigh stepped forward and checked the man’s pulse, then nodded at his brother.
“Get the dressings off him,” Clarence said, “then let’s get out of here.”
“Poor guy,” Raleigh said as they scrambled from the wrecked building.
“Yeah,” Clarence said without emotion, “the storm took its toll.”
A short distance outside of town, Clarence pulled the SUV to the side of the road and stopped. “This is the end of the gig, you know,” he said.
“The cop?” Raleigh asked.
“Yeah. Even though nothing can tie us to the guy’s death, if someone from the store realizes there’s stuff missing and the patrolman remembers two paramedics entering the place, it’s going to create a lot of curiosity. More than we need.”
Raleigh was already pulling off his EMT jacket. Clarence stepped from the Terrain into the now-dark evening and removed the magnetic signs from the SUV. Crickets in an adjacent field chirped a lively greeting to the night while a brisk, cool wind whipped over the toneless landscape. Occasional bursts from distant sirens, emergency vehicles in Honeybee, flailed through the deepening darkness.
Clarence climbed back into the Terrain. “We’ll ditch all this stuff later,” he said, gesturing at the signs, the jackets, and the medical bag.
“And then?”
Clarence shrugged. “Just ordinary storm chasers, I guess. At least for a while. We’ll figure something out.”
He slipped the GMC into gear and drove off into the Oklahoma night.
AFTER METCALF departed, Chuck walked three blocks to his frequent nightly haunt, a sprawling bar and grill called The Cowboy Corral. Lightning flickered in the darkening sky to the west, and the rumble of distant thunder rolled over the landscape in alternating waves of pianissimo and forte.
He took a seat at his customary table near the front window, underneath a neon sign advertising BEEF, BEER, and BANJOS. The Banjos, a bluegrass band, wouldn’t start until later, well after he was home. The aroma of grilled meat and barbecue sauce filled the restaurant.
Daisy, a waitress of a certain age with a cute face, curly red hair, and a stick figure greeted him warmly. “Hey, hon, right on time I see.” She patted his hand in a motherly fashion. “Ya have a good day?”
“Pretty good.”
“Reckon ya want the usual? Cheeseburger—Swiss—fries and a whiskey?”
He nodded.
Daisy turned to go, but he remembered the advance pledged by Metcalf and called her back.
“It was a good day,” he said. “Start a tab for me and bring me a Porterhouse, medium rare, and a Black Jack on the rocks, not the cheap stuff.”
“Good for you,” she said, and walked off humming to herself. She returned shortly with his drink. “A little fuller than usual,” she pointed out, “to celebrate.” In truth, she probably was just lobbying for a healthy tip, a share of the fruits of “having a good day.”
As he waited for his steak, Chuck nursed the Jack Daniel’s and reviewed the contentious relationship that existed between him and his son, Tyler.
He’d lost track of Ty after Ty had stormed out of his life, angry over the bankruptcy, angry over the loss of his college funds, and angry over Chuck’s “failure” to accept him.
But he was a difficult kid to accept. He challenged the norms of society and the Bible, choosing his own life style despite the admonitions of his family and counselors, and was adamant there was nothing wrong with his behavior. Anyone who wanted to change him was accused of having a “narrow-minded agenda.” Chuck indicted him as a “pig-headed teenager.”
They’d never had a knock-down-drag-out argument; instead, they merely threw verbal barbs and insults at one another and allowed a low-grade animosity to hover over their tenuous kinship.
Chuck’s steak arrived, still sizzling, accompanied by Daisy singing along with country music wafting from overhead speakers. She smiled sadly as she vocalized with George Strait that “All My Ex’s Live in Texas,” and did a little shuffle to Toby Keith’s “Beer for My Horses” when she left.
As Chuck cut into his Porterhouse, his musings drifted back to his son. Perhaps it was time to try again, to reach out to Ty, to extend an olive branch, to offer him a chance to ride shotgun for his father as dear old Dad went on a hunt for a million bucks—more than enough to replenish the lost college savings. Or, if Ty had completed college on his own, enough to cover the cost of an advanced degree. He owed his son that much, even if it turned out they were unable to abolish the familial DMZ that divided them. That would be his way, he decided, as the lyrics of the Toby Keith piece went, of raising up a glass “against evil forces, singing whisky for my men, beer for my horses.”
He tried to envision what Ty might look like now, but couldn’t. The last time he’d seen his son he’d been a gangly 19-year-old with unkempt shoulder-length hair, a bad complexion, and an addiction to
The Smashing Pumpkins and their grunge-heavy metal-gothic rock music. Surely he wasn’t the same person now, as a man.
Chuck resolved to call him as soon as he got back to his apartment. His ex-wife had given him Ty’s number several years ago, but he’d never bothered to phone, wasn’t even sure where his son lived. Who knows, maybe the number was no longer valid.
Still, he’d try, knowing his call would likely be greeted by Ty with all the warmth a member of Hamas might get from a rabbi.
He finished his meal, signed the chit brought by Daisy, added a ten-dollar tip, and headed home.
SUNDAY, APRIL 14
ON SUNDAY, Chuck made a trip to the Storm Prediction Center. The center had moved to Norman from Kansas City a number of years earlier and set up residence on the University of Oklahoma’s campus. He still had friends there, and they allowed him to pore over data looking for telltale signs of future atmospheric turmoil, the sort that triggers the monster supercells of the Great Plains, the breeders of the Grim Reapers of spring: violent tornadoes.
But there was none. No prediction of the classic upper-air pattern that gets the hearts of chasers and forecasters racing. No southward undulation of the jet stream winds over the Rockies that create the warring air masses on which supercells thrive: warm, humid conditions over the Plains and a cold, dry environment in the Mountain West. It wasn’t that simple, of course, but Chuck knew the upper-air signature, the large-scale initiator, had to be there before he worried about smaller-scale details, parameters such as vorticity and helicity, instability and inhibition, theta-Es and LFCs.
He called Metcalf to tell him there was nothing on the meteorological horizon to get excited over.
“Let me remind you, Chuckie,” Metcalf said, “mid-May. That’s when the clock strikes midnight and you either turn into a frog or Prince Charming.”
“I don’t think that’s a strictly accurate interpretation of the fairy tale.”
“Close enough for Hollywood work.”
“I can’t change what I can’t change,” Chuck snapped.
“But you can change where we go hunting . . . just so it’s someplace that looks like frigging Oklahoma.”
“Right,” Chuck said, resignation threading his voice.
TUESDAY, APRIL 16
ON TUESDAY, he returned to the Cowboy Corral for dinner, Ty still on his mind. He’d tried several times over the past three days to reach his son by phone, but never got an answer. He was reluctant to leave a voice mail, deeming that an inappropriate way to make initial contact after almost a decade of estrangement. He wanted to have a conversation with Ty, not leave a recorded message.
Daisy arrived at his table.
“Good to see ya again, hon. Another steak this evening? Got some good lookin’ T-bones back there.” She inclined her head toward the kitchen.
“No,” Chuck said, his voice soft. “Better make it a cheeseburger. And no Black Jack, either. Back to the bar stock, I’m afraid.” Although the promised check from Metcalf had arrived via FedEx on Monday, Chuck realized the money wouldn’t last long if he insisted on living a Rolls-Royce lifestyle on a roller-skate budget.
Daisy nodded, looking a bit downcast, likely realizing there wouldn’t be another ten-dollar gratuity this evening.
On the stage near the dance floor, a man sipped a beer and plunked on a banjo, apparently just practicing. The band wasn’t scheduled to perform tonight.
Daisy delivered the burger and whiskey, and Chuck worked his way slowly through both. As he drained the last smidgen of liquor from his glass, a woman approached the table where he sat.
“Good evening,” she said. “Mr. Rittenburg?”
Chuck studied her. Dark-complected, hazel eyes, short black hair—attractive but not classically beautiful. A tan business suit and white blouse suggested she was something other than a “working girl.”
“And you are?” he asked.
She fished into a black leather purse hanging over her left shoulder and pulled out an ID case. She flipped it open.
“Special Agent Medeiros, FBI,” she said.
Chuck examined her ID. “Shit. Now what? Cuz I missed my alimony payment last month? Cuz I was late with my rent?” Well why not? He remembered an old joke from somewhere in the past: “Cheer up,” my friend told me, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up and sure enough, things got worse.
“I’m not after you, Mr. Rittenburg. I just want to talk with you.”
“Talk?”
“I have a proposal, a job offer.”
Chuck fiddled with his empty whiskey glass and stared at the woman. Bizarre. Two offers in one week?
“Can I buy you another one?” she asked, pointing at the glass.
Daisy stood at a distance, eyeing the exchange and frowning a bit. She reminded Chuck of a protective, but skinny, mama bear watching over her cub.
“No, one’s my limit . . . ah, screw it. Why not? Sure. Have a seat and enlighten me.” He gestured at a chair on the other side of the table.
She sat. “Mind if I grab something to eat?” she asked. “Maybe a sandwich. I skipped lunch. Kinda hungry.”
He motioned Daisy over, but she took her time.
“Something for Ms. Medeiros,” he said when Daisy finally arrived. “And a Black Jack for me.”
Medeiros ordered a turkey burger—no mayo—and a green salad. “Gotta watch what I eat,” she said, “or I get a little heavy in the ass and start looking like a female Michelin Man.” She laughed lightly, helping ease the tension that had tightened across Chuck’s shoulders.
“So, have you been staking me out, Agent Medeiros?” he asked.
“No. And call me Gabi, please. My full name is Gabriela Galina Medeiros. Gabi’s a lot easier. I considered phoning you, but I really wanted to make my pitch face-to-face. I thought maybe I could catch you at your apartment after work—my work—but you were gone by the time I got there. Neighbors told me they thought you ate supper ‘down the street someplace,’ so that pretty much narrowed it to this place or Mickey D’s. And this place seemed a better fit for supper. Since it’s early, you were pretty easy to spot.”
Daisy delivered the Jack Daniel’s, burger, and salad, then hovered nearby, perhaps making sure there was no hanky panky going on, until Chuck cast a steely-eyed glare at her.
“So, Agent Gabi, what is this job offer you have? It’s hard to believe I have any skills the Feds would be interested in. I’m not a lawyer. Never worked in law enforcement. I don’t have any forensic meteorology skills. You probably got the wrong guy.”
He took a sip of his upgraded whiskey and swilled it around in his mouth, savoring its bite.
“You accusing the FBI of screwing up, not knowing what they’re doing?”
“No. I guess that’s never happened, huh?”
She dropped a smidgen of dressing onto her salad, then tossed it with her fork.
“Never,” she said. A hint of a smile snuck across her face then quickly dissipated. “Charles Rittenburg. Born Emporia, Kansas, 1963. BS and MS in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. Worked at the National Severe Storms Forecast Center, later the Storm Prediction Center, from 1986 to 1996. Started Thunder Road Tours in—”
“Okay,” Chuck interrupted, “you got your man.” He raised his arms over his head in mock surrender.
Gabi nodded, then took a bite of her turkey burger.
“So that brings me back to my original question,” Chuck said. “Why does the FBI want a broken down, bankrupt, under-employed weatherman?”
Gabi continued to chew her burger before answering.
“Because,” she finally said, “I want to go on a tornado chase.”
Chuck laughed, reached for his Jack Daniel’s, and took a good pull.
“In case you missed it, I don’t do that any
more.”
“Oh, I didn’t miss it, Mr. Rittenburg. Do you read the newspaper?”
“Can’t afford a subscription.”
“Sunday Oklahoman,” she said. “A little article noting that Charles Rittenburg, former owner and president of Thunder Road Tours, has signed a contract with Global-American Cinema to lead cinematographers for the upcoming movie, The Okies, on a tornado chase. Specifically, in pursuit of an EF-4 or EF-5, if I have my terminology correct.”
“You do,” he said.
He downed the remainder of his whiskey in one swallow. A pleasant hum surged through his head, disconnecting him from the reality of the conversation he was having.
“Look, I just want to tag along on your storm safari,” Gabi responded. “The government will pay for your services. Maybe not what a Hollywood film company dishes out, but we’ll ante up a fair consulting fee.”
“So this isn’t personal? It’s a federal thing?”
“Yes.”
“Something to do with Global-American Cinema?”
“No.”
“If it’s government business, why not use a government worker as your guide, someone from the Storm Prediction Center or National Severe Storms Laboratory?”
The banjo player had stepped up his pace, tapping his foot and picking out a tune that sounded like the dueling banjo music from Deliverance.
“Guy’s good,” Gabi said, finishing her salad. “But to answer your question, I thought about getting a NOAA employee, then decided against it.”
“Why?”
“Several reasons. One, I wanted the best chaser on the Plains, even if he’s no longer active. But, thanks to Global-American, it turns out he is—I’ve researched you thoroughly, Mr. Rittenburg. Two, since you’ve already got an expedition set up, it seemed logical just to piggyback on it and carry a low profile. And three, I’m stalking the same thing you are.”
“For what reason, if I may ask?”
“If we’re partners, I’ll tell you.” Gabi rested her chin in her hands and gazed directly at him.
The buzzing swirling through his head increased, picked his thoughts and flung them around the room like a dust devil in a drought. Against his better judgment, which apparently had taken shelter in a storm cellar, he smiled and extended his hand to Gabi.
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