Side by Side wm-3

by John Ramsey Miller

  The large door was before her; to her right several fifty-gallon drums-two of which had pumps in the tops with hoses ending in nozzles-lined the wall. Several plastic gas cans stood beside those drums. Between the drums and the trailer was a stack of firewood piled in a small trailer made from a truck bed.

  She carried Eli down the trailer’s steps, her free hand gripping the flashlight. Lucy took a few steps out into the space toward the inset door, heard a loud squeak, and spun back toward the storage room. Her heart lurched, imagining Scaly-hands or the woman about to jump out into the warehouse. She played the light beam over the door. As she watched, the hinges squeaked and what looked like a gloved hand waved at her through the slowly opening door.

  Lucy ran to the outside inset door and tried to open it, but to her horror she saw a massive padlock hanging there. The lock secured two rings that held a steel bolt to the iron frame so it could be opened either from inside or outside the warehouse. The woman hadn’t locked the trailer, or tied Lucy up, because she’d known Lucy could only escape from the trailer into a larger trap. And this was a trap where she and her son were not alone.

  Panic rising, Lucy clutched Eli to her and backed toward the trailer. The flashlight’s beam told her that what had appeared to be a hand was a blunt muzzle. The heavy door had moved due to steady pressure of powerful shoulders.

  First one, then several block-bodied dogs poured into the larger space. Soundlessly, they spread out as a pack and formed a low wall before her of hungry red eyes, sculpted muscle, and bared teeth.

  29

  Winter Massey parked in the shopping center’s lot in sight of Alexa’s sedan. He saw Click Smoot spring from the sports car and run, coat over his head, through the rain into one of those coliseum-sized media stores, where both the music department and the computer department had shelves upon shelves filled with television sets. Winter couldn’t imagine how any of these monster stores did enough business to keep the lights on and employ as many people as they did-which seemed to be about one for every five thousand square feet of retail space. He called Alexa on the cell phone.

  “I need to grab a disguise or two,” he told Alexa. “If he moves, I’ll catch up.”

  “Grab me a hat,” she said. “I’ll reimburse you.”

  “Halloween’s on me this year,” he said.

  Winter jumped from the pickup and sprinted into a sporting store. For himself, he selected three jackets in various designs and colors, two sweatshirts, half a dozen assorted baseball caps, and three pairs of sunglasses in different styles. For Alexa, he picked a tan jacket, a blue ball cap, and a pair of sunglasses with light yellow lenses. He paid cash for everything and drove back to Alexa’s car, then got out of the truck, opened Alexa’s passenger door, and climbed inside.

  Eyes on the media store Click had gone into, Alexa said, “North Carolina combat shopping champion. According to my watch, that was a shade under two minutes.”

  “I hope the items meet your approval. I wasn’t sure which ball teams you follow.”

  “That’s easy. None of them.”

  “So, aside from the job, what the hell do you do with your time, Lex?”

  “Think about how to do the job better,” Alexa said.

  “Sounds exciting,” Winter said.

  “It sure can be.”

  “Last time we talked, you said you had run into a brick wall career-wise. Something about the Bureau putting you out to pasture teaching at the academy.”

  “I’ve made some enemies over the years, Massey, but I’m not teaching yet.”

  “Okay, so when the string does run out, what are you going to do with your life?”

  “Watch a lot of football,” she replied, putting a Panther’s cap on her head. “I might open up a security firm like the one that pays you a fortune to come in for a few days every week to teach failed cops and ex-football players to protect Texaco executives. Only I’ll have the kind of operation that gets back the employees they fail to protect from abductors.” She smiled. “Big office in D.C. Precious and I will. .” The smile started to evaporate from her face, but she salvaged it.

  “Your sister,” Winter mused. “She’d be a solid partner. Hard as nails. Blind ambition. She’s a captain now, isn’t she?”

  “A major.”

  “That’s like a step away from colonel, isn’t it?”

  “Antonia’s doing all right,” Alexa said.

  “She’s an MP?”

  Alexa nodded.

  “Both Keen girls in federal law enforcement. Mama Jack must be proud.” Mama Jack had been the woman who had rescued Alexa and Antonia from the foster home shuffle.

  Alexa turned her eyes to Winter and her expression softened. “Mama Jack died, Massey. Last year.”

  “I didn’t know. I’m terribly sorry.” Winter had liked Mama Jack Prior, had admired that the fearless woman had opened her loving home to something like twenty-six children over the years. All children nobody else wanted.

  “She was ninety-six. Went peacefully in her sleep,” Alexa said. “We all got to go out sometime.”

  “I’m going to take a quick look inside,” Winter said.

  “Go for it,” Alexa said.

  Winter knew that, while Click might not remember him from the Westin’s lobby, the kid’s subconscious mind had a record of the stranger and his brain might send a subliminal danger message that would draw his conscious scrutiny, and then he probably would recall seeing Winter. To lessen the risk, Winter had not only changed clothes but also changed his height and posture. Slumping slightly, he altered his natural stride. He sauntered into the media store like a man with a reason to be there, and went directly to the CDs. He spotted Click standing at the computer counter looking at something in the salesman’s hands. The clerk was animated in his pitch about whatever the item happened to be.

  Winter tilted his head down, acting like someone glancing idly through the stacks of CDs, and watched Ferny Ernest Smoot until he was sure the transaction was a normal one. Convinced, he walked out of the store and climbed into the car with Alexa.

  “He meeting with anyone?”

  “Seems to be buying something computer-related,” Winter reported.

  “He see you?”

  Winter looked at her.

  “I can’t believe I asked you that,” Alexa said, smiling. “Sorry. I’m getting senile.”

  “I wish we had another car and a couple of good people,” Winter told her. “This kid is shopping like he doesn’t have anything at all pressing to do. What about Clayton? Maybe he can come give us some assistance?”

  She shrugged. “If we have to, I’ll ask him, but he’s not exactly a field person. Anyway, he’s far more valuable in his hotel room. He’s got traces running on Smoot credit cards, has nets waiting on voice-pattern matches.”

  “I hope he keeps furnishing the same quality intelligence,” Winter said.

  “I can just about guarantee that,” Alexa said.

  Winter yawned and sat back to wait out Ferny Ernest.

  30

  Click Smoot spent $828.46 on memory, DVDs, and music CDs at the media store. Actually, some mark by the name of Edmund C. Kellogg had that amount charged to his AmEx Gold card. By the time the mark got his bill, Click would have put ten times that much on it. According to the supplier of the card, the real Edmund Kellogg was on a holy-roller church-sponsored eye-surgery mission trip so some born-again doctors could restore sight to a bunch of scabby villagers way up in the mountains of Peru. Kellogg wouldn’t be where he could use the card for three more weeks. Click had plans to help American Express give him about ten grand of its income.

  He used the large plastic bag containing the merchandise for an umbrella, holding it over his head as he ran to his car, unlocking it with the key fob as he approached it. He didn’t pay any attention to the cars around him, or anything else, because as soon as he was inside the car he was busily rifling through the CDs trying to decide which one to put into the most expensive music p
layer on the market. The player, new speakers, and professional installation had all been a gift from a stranger named Richard D. Lewis.

  He had a few places to hit, then he was going to head to the house, open a beer or three, and watch some high-definition girls acting nasty.

  31

  His small arms around her neck, his legs around her waist, Elijah Dockery clung to his mother like a wet sheet. He was not afraid of strangers, but dogs terrified him. Lucy had grown up with dogs. Her parents had owned a succession of dogs for pets, but these dogs were not anybody’s pets. This pack was a collection of powerful, square-headed, no-nonsense canine gladiators bred to be aggressive. These were just the sort of pit bulls who had worked so relentlessly to earn the entire breed a reputation for the unprovoked violence that was focused on other mammals. . including people.

  These animals wore no collars, and but for their strong odor and the puffs of dust made by their paws as they circled the Dockerys, they might have been hallucinations. The pack’s alpha seemed to be a bull-necked male-an animal whose golden hide was crisscrossed with dark scars-whose short, pyramid-shaped ears looked like ancient, rough-hewn arrowheads. A black-and-white female, the smallest and thinnest, limped and looked to be blind in one eye. Beneath her sharply defined ribs hung twin rows of prunelike nipples. She raised her head and sniffed the still air as she followed the others around Lucy and Elijah.

  Lucy used the flashlight’s beam to keep the dogs at bay the same way a lion tamer uses a chair and a whip. It was dark enough so that the light hurt their eyes.

  There were eight dogs-seven more than it would take to kill a helpless woman and child. The heaviest dog weighed as much as Lucy did. She wondered if they had ever attacked people. They weren’t doing so at the moment. In fact, they seemed unsure, nervous.

  Arms tight around Elijah, Lucy inched backward toward the trailer, anxiously watching the animals for any sign of an impending attack. Taking advantage of their hesitation, she moved faster toward the steel steps at the trailer’s front door. The female stopped abruptly, positioning herself between the Dockerys and the trailer. The dog watched Lucy come on, the flashlight’s beam setting a fire in her good eye. As she raised her head and sniffed, she suddenly whirled and skittered away as if her paws had touched a bare electric wire.

  Lucy kept the light in the dogs’ eyes and kept backing up, finally putting a boot heel on the first step, using the light like a flame to keep the dogs blinded. One of the younger animals whirled and followed the old female into the storage room.

  Elijah started crying. Buoyed by the sound of fear, the dogs moved closer, but then stopped suddenly and turned their heads toward the door. Lucy knew why they had stopped. The growl of an approaching motor filled the building and harsh light shone through the cracks around the warehouse doors. Lucy opened the trailer door and saw that the dogs were slinking back into their lair. They were more afraid of whoever was coming than they were interested in harming Lucy and Elijah.

  She went inside, closing the door behind her. She put Elijah in the playpen and scrabbled frantically at her boots, trying to untie the laces. Elijah was crying louder, holding out his arms, begging to be picked up. “Soon, Eli. Soon.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  The warehouse door creaked open, then was slammed closed.

  One lace was knotted, and she fumbled to find a loose place in the leather straps, while Elijah cried and tried to get back in her arms. Lucy slipped out of the laced boot, leaving the knot in it. She tossed the boots into the bunkroom. Scooping Elijah up, she ran into the bedroom, set him on the bed, took off the camouflage jacket, and wedged it between two of the boxes stacked against the wall. She couldn’t remember if she had turned off the flashlight, which was in the pocket of the jacket.

  She sat on the bed, pulled Elijah to her, and fought to control her trembling.

  Whoever was approaching the trailer was whistling a tune that was so off-key that Lucy couldn’t identify it.

  32

  Click Smoot quit shopping around six o’clock because his car was as packed full of merchandise as it could get. He loved his Z car. It was absolutely him-sure-footed, fast as owl turds on a water slide, masculine, attractive, and hot. Really hot.

  He lived in a quiet residential neighborhood ten blocks behind a vast Ford dealership on Independence Boulevard. His red-brick ranch looked pretty much like others in the area-single-family style with a couple thousand square feet of floor space on a neatly kept lot replete with shade trees, flower beds, and pruned shrubs. There was nothing to indicate that an unmarried twenty-one-year-old bachelor lived there. He parked the Z in the garage beside his old GMC panel van. The van wasn’t exactly a chick magnet, but it was a flying hoot to drive, and held lots of merchandise.

  He was the only Smoot with a yard that had well-kept grass. One of his father’s cousins had a landscaping company that did Click’s yard in exchange for a favor here and there. They had started that company as a front, but to keep up the appearance of propriety, they employed about fifty Mexicans and made sure they had good equipment and that they all worked hard. They paid them the going salary plus Chinese overtime, which was an additional five bucks cash for every hour over forty. Plus, some of them made extra money playing crash-test dummies in auto-insurance scams. While the Mexicans did the sweating, the crew chiefs cased the homes of the wealthy clients for the family burglars.

  Once Click had bought something, it lost its value to him and became mere inventory, which would become twenty cents on the dollar for a great deal of trouble and the risk of getting caught at it. So that had gotten him thinking, why lose eighty cents on the dollar? Why go to all that trouble for watered-down money when you could go straight into an account and get full value on every dollar you robbed? And you could steal from anywhere on earth from anywhere you were.

  Click unpacked the Z, putting the purchases he would pass to the family pawnshops on the appropriate shelves, and taking the items he had bought for himself into his house. As he entered the mudroom, he noticed that one of the bulbs in one of the three night-light fixtures was blackened and he felt a wave of anxiety as he unscrewed it and took it into the house with him.

  He entered the kitchen, hung his keys on the peg.

  The Felix the Cat clock over the stove cut its eyes back and forth as its pendulum tail swung side to side.

  He opened a cabinet and took down a packet of night-light bulbs and pried one loose. He threw out the old one and took the new one back to the mudroom and screwed it in, cutting the lights to make sure it worked.

  Hurriedly he went through the entire house, checking each night-light and the batteries in each of the dozen flashlights.

  As soon as he was sure his illumination requirements were covered, Click stood still and, as he listened to the clock, a soul-crushing dark pressure settled down on him.

  He felt the enormous weight of being the only warm-blooded mammal in the place, and Ferny Ernest prayed that the DVD in his hand would lessen the emptiness.

  33

  In his hotel room, Clayton Able sat staring at the screen of his laptop computer. He was monitoring Winter Massey and Alexa Keen. The cellular phones Keen and Massey carried were marvels of modern design, feeding Clayton their geographic locations and performing as microphones that transmitted directly to his receivers, which were being monitored by people in the adjoining room. In addition, his people had wired Alexa’s car and her handbag.

  The door to the room adjoining his was open, and he could see his technicians at work.

  Clayton stood, turned toward the window, and yawned while stretching out his arms. Sitting at the keyboard made his back feel like someone had hit him high between the shoulders with a ball-peen hammer. It was dark out, and still raining. It had been two hours since Winter and Alexa had taken off to chase after Click.

  “This Ferny Ernest thing is troubling,” the woman standing in the doorway said, scattering his thoughts.

  “Ferny Ernest Smoot is
n’t going to lead anyone to the Dockerys. I doubt the kid could even lead them to his father. Even so, Peanut wouldn’t be dumb enough to go near the Dockerys.”

  “You didn’t know Click was trailing the judge,” the woman said accusatorily.

  “If Massey hadn’t spotted Click in the lobby, I would have given them another trail to run to keep them busy until Monday. As it turns out, it may have been a godsend blind alley.”

  “You didn’t need to include a picture of Click with the others,” the woman said.

  “It was hopelessly outdated. Massey was-”

  “Don’t you dare say lucky,” she chided.

  “Click isn’t supposed to be connected to this. Dixie, Buck, and those twins are doing the actual work, and they’re out of circulation. Look, as long as we stay on top of Alexa and Massey, it will all work out and everybody wins.”

  He studied his boss, someone he admired the way he would admire something pretty and dangerous to stand too close to. Clayton knew that if he was neck deep in quicksand, and if she didn’t need him alive, she’d watch him go under without altering her facial expression. She was also every bit as beautiful as she was conniving, and she was the most manipulative job of work he’d ever worked with. Clayton was glad he was on her side in this, because being on the other side was not an attractive alternative. You could ask anybody who’d ever gotten in this woman’s way-if you could find them. She’d come up the ranks from an MP grunt into a position of authority within Military Intelligence like she’d been shot there from a cannon.

  This Bryce business had the potential to turn very ugly. Clayton hadn’t wanted Alexa to bring Winter Massey into this, but there hadn’t been any way he could stop her since the FBI agent was now the key to the thing smelling right after the dust settled.