Darkness, Sing Me a Song--A Holland Taylor Mystery

by David Housewright

  “Since you put it that way…”

  “Look at the bright side, Taylor. The ATF will owe you one.”

  “Rachel, please. I stopped believing in Santa Claus a long time ago.”

  I started walking toward my Camry. Colgin followed behind with some last-minute instructions. When I got near, I pointed my remote and pressed a button. The car’s lights flickered, and my locks clicked open. I hit another button and popped my trunk lid.

  “What are you doing?” Colgin asked.

  I answered by digging into the compartment where the spare tire was stored and coming up with my Beretta.

  “No, no,” Colgin said. “I’m sorry, Taylor. You’re a civilian. I can’t have you shooting up the place.”

  “What am I going to do about the armed guard who will be sitting next to me on the front seat of my car while you assault the compound?”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  I racked the slide and released it, jacking a round into the chamber. I thumbed the safety on.

  “Fortunately, I did,” I said.

  “Taylor, I’m begging you. Please don’t shoot anyone unless you absolutely have to. You can’t believe the paperwork.”

  * * *

  I pulled off the county highway onto the dirt road and stopped in front of the gate. My headlights illuminated the sign attached to the iron bar that blocked the road—PRIVATE PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING. It was still dark enough that they also caused the guard to shield his eyes momentarily, and I wondered if I had caught him napping. He stepped out of the tiny guardhouse and crossed over to me. He was holding his assault rifle by one hand. I recognized him as I powered down my window.

  “Jerry,” I said. “It’s Jerry, right? Open the gate. I need to see Blevins right away.”

  “No one gets in without permission.”

  “Get permission.”

  I heard the voice squawking from the radio attached to his shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” it said.

  Jerry squeezed a button and replied.

  “It’s that private eye,” he said. “Taylor.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “I want to see Blevins,” I said.

  Jerry spoke into the transmitter. “He wants to see Blevins.”

  “It’s five-fucking-thirty in the morning. I ain’t waking up nobody at five-fucking-thirty in the morning.”

  “Come back later,” Jerry said.

  “Later might be too late.”

  “Why? Why might it be too late?”

  “Listen to me. I’ve been interrogated by the ATF most of the night. They’re trying to get me to roll over on Blevins for that thing that happened in Menominee. Now open the damn gate.”

  “No. You wait here.”

  Jerry turned his back and moved away. I heard him say, “Tom? You had better wake up Curtis. Here’s why…” After that it was all just dull murmurs. They lasted for a couple of minutes. Finally Jerry returned to the car. He was holding the radio up. I heard Blevins’s voice.

  “Talk to me, Taylor,” it said.

  “I went to see Esther yesterday after I spoke to you. She was at the bomb site. Did you know someone planted a bomb at the silica sand mine?”

  “I heard. Go on.”

  “The place was crawling with ATF agents. One of them must have overheard my conversation with Esther. Your blabbermouth niece told me basically the same thing that you told me about Menominee and Julie and everything else. Later, the agents grabbed me up. They wanted me to repeat what Esther said on the record, turn hearsay into evidence, I guess. I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about. Look, man, they could yank my license for this.”

  “You better come in. Jerry?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jerry said.

  “You come with him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Search him first.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said.

  I opened the car door and slid out. I put my hands on my head and spun around while Jerry frisked me. He did a much better job than he had the first time around. If I had been wearing a wire, he would have known.

  “He’s cool,” Jerry spoke into the radio.

  “Come ahead,” Blevins told him.

  I returned to the Camry. It took a few moments before Jerry was able to disengage the large lock and unwind the chain that kept the gate closed. He swung it open and hopped into the passenger side of the Camry, carrying his rifle straight up between his knees. I passed through the gate and kept going. Jerry glanced through the rear window.

  “I wanted to lock it again,” he said.

  “I’ll only be here for ten minutes,” I said.

  The sun had been rising steadily and now gave the forest a golden hue. Birds I could not identify began singing their morning songs.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” Jerry said.

  “How did you get involved in all this nonsense, anyway?” I asked.

  “What nonsense?”

  “The Red Stone Patriots.”

  “Things are getting out of hand.”

  “I agree, but is an armed militia part of the solution or part of the problem?”

  “We’re a constitutional militia. We believe in the rule of law, not the arbitrary rule of fat-cat politicians who are bought and paid for by special interest groups. I mean, there’s got to be a limit to their power, a limit to government, or you get shitheads like U.S. Sand paying ’em off with campaign checks so they can do whatever they fucking want and t’ hell with the people, you know?”

  “It’s not the philosophy that makes me nervous. It’s the guns. The bombs.”

  “What bombs?”

  I followed one last long curve to the entrance of the compound. I turned off the road and drove past the small green cabins and the pole barn. The only people I could see were Tom and Curtis Blevins. They were both standing at the foot of the wooden staircase that led to the front door of Blevins’s trailer. Tom was hugging his AK-47 to his body like a teddy bear. Blevins merely stood there watching, his hands on his hips and an expression of curiosity on his face, while I swung the Camry away from the trailer and slowed to a stop. I powered down the passenger side window and turned off the ignition.

  “It’s okay to park closer,” Jerry said.

  He reached for the door handle.

  “Jerry,” I said.

  He turned his head to look at me and saw the nine-millimeter Beretta semiautomatic handgun I was pointing at his chest. I had stowed it in the storage compartment attached to the driver’s side door when he had searched me earlier.

  “Do what I say,” I told him. “We’ll both get out of this in one piece.”

  “You sonuvabitch,” he said.

  “Slide your rifle out of the window, muzzle first. Do it slowly. Do it now.”

  He did. The sight of the rifle being tossed out of the car window caused both Tom and Blevins to flinch. Tom uncradled his rifle and began to hold it like he knew what it was used for. Blevins folded his arms across his chest and took a couple of tentative steps forward as if he were expecting an explanation.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Jerry said.

  “Hands on the dash.”

  Jerry complied.

  “Believe it or not, I’m doing you a favor,” I said. “As far as I know, you haven’t actually committed a crime, so you should be able to walk away from this.”

  “Walk away from what?”

  That’s when the cavalry arrived. Four vehicles carrying agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, as well as deputies of the Kamin County Sheriff’s Department, scattered to all sides of the compound. The vans unloaded, and the occupants quickly spread out among the cabins and pole barn as if their movements had all been carefully choreographed ahead of time.

  Tom screamed an obscenity, brought the AK to his shoulder, and squeezed off a dozen rounds at the agents.

  He missed.

  A single ATF agent fired back
and did not miss.

  At least one bullet caught Tom high in the shoulder. He spun around. The rifle went flying from his grasp. He fell in a heap. The agent ran to his side. He secured Tom’s weapon. He secured Tom. He waved a deputy over, and together they began administering first aid.

  Other agents led dazed Patriots from the cabins, their hands high in the air; all of them were dressed for bed. One by one they were handcuffed and made to kneel in a group. A circle of agents guarded them.

  The huge doors of the pole barn were opened, and agents began searching the vehicles parked inside, as well as any unopened room and cabinet they came across. A couple of agents carried cameras and took video of the weapons and other contraband their colleagues discovered.

  Jerry and I watched it all through the windshield of my car.

  “You’re a traitor,” Jerry said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “I’m just a guy doing a favor for a girl.”

  Special Agent Rachel Colgin moved from one group of agents to another. She paused where they were treating Tom. Apparently he wasn’t badly hurt, because he answered Colgin’s questions by spitting in her face. She wiped off the spittle with the back of her hand and walked toward my Camry. She saw me holding the Beretta on Jerry through the windshield and waved a couple of deputies over. They pulled Jerry from the car, cuffed him, and made him kneel, too.

  “Have you seen Blevins?” Colgin asked.

  “Fuck you,” Jerry said.

  Colgin actually smiled and pointed in my direction.

  “I was talking to him,” she said.

  “Last I saw, Blevins was standing by his trailer,” I said. “When you arrived, he must have hightailed it around the trailer and through the firing range they have back there into the woods.”

  “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “What would you have had me do? Shoot him? I’m a civilian, remember? I’m not even supposed to be here.”

  Colgin turned to stare at the route I had described.

  “My people will pick him up,” she said.

  “Your agents don’t know the ground. He does. If he’s smart, he had already planned his escape route.”

  Colgin started shouting.

  “All right. Curtis Blevins is in the wind.” She moved closer to her agents. “I want a hard-target search starting right now.”

  Jerry smirked. “You got nothing,” he said.

  “That’s okay. I wasn’t expecting all that much. Anyway, unlike you, I’m going home.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  It was just after eight when I returned to the parking lot of the Everheart Resort, Restaurant, and Bar. The adrenaline rush I had received during the raid on the Red Stone Patriots had already worn off, and I felt bone tired.

  I slipped the Beretta under my belt at the small of my back and covered it with the sports jacket because I was just too exhausted to go through the trouble of stashing it in my trunk again. I walked toward the main entrance. Many of the resort’s other guests were already up and about, their faces fresh from a good night’s sleep. I, on the other hand, looked like death warmed over. At least that’s the impression I got from Bill Everheart, who called to me from behind the registration desk.

  “Man, you look like you cut the candle in half and burned it on all four ends,” he said. “What the hell happened?”

  I was too tired to explain it to him.

  “When’s checkout?” I asked.

  “Eleven. You’re leaving us, huh?”

  “Time to go home. Can you put my bill together?”

  “Happy to. Did you hear? The county attorney is asking for a thirty-day injunction against U.S. Sand. There’s going to be a court hearing tomorrow. This after the mine got bombed yesterday. I thought things were going to quiet down after the town hall.”

  “It’s going to get worse.”

  “What?”

  I told him about the raid.

  “This is sure to hurt business,” Everheart said.

  “Is that all you care about? I have no love for either the militias or the environmentalists, but at least they’re making a stand for what they believe. But you—pick a side, man.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re leaving. I live here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I glanced at my watch. Breakfast or shower? I asked myself.

  “Breakfast first,” I decided.

  “Feel free to charge it to your room. Your bill will be waiting.”

  “Just so you know, if they were pulling this shit in my backyard, I’d be tempted to blow up something, too.”

  I drifted into the dining room and found my table, the one with a view of the restaurant, bar, and lobby entrance. The waitress didn’t even bother to ask if I wanted coffee. Instead, she brought a pot over and began filling a mug.

  “Bless you,” I said.

  “You look like you need it.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Sugar, cream?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of diluting it.”

  She dropped a menu in front of me and said she’d return in a moment. When she did, I ordered the Riverman’s Special, which was your basic steak, eggs, and hash browns, except that it also came with a choice of cocktails—Bloody Mary, screwdriver, Irish coffee, mimosa, and something called the Corpse Reviver. I went with the screwdriver because of the vitamin C. I’ve always believed in a healthy diet.

  I was just starting to enjoy the meal when Skip Zetzman arrived, carrying a tan reporter’s notebook. I hoped he wasn’t looking for me, but he was. He sat at my table without asking permission and started talking.

  “The ATF raided the compound of the Red Stone Patriots this morning,” he told me.

  I chewed my steak and swallowed carefully before replying.

  “Is that right?”

  “Don’t give me that, Taylor. You were there.”

  I scooped a forkful of hash browns onto a piece of toast. “Who says?” I took a bite.

  “I have my sources.”

  Not the ATF, I told myself. It was probably one of the Kamin County deputies speaking out of turn.

  “No, that’s just an ugly rumor spread by loose-talking people,” I said. “I’m a civilian. Why would I be there?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  Zetzman opened his notebook and prepared a pen as if he actually expected me to talk to him. Instead, I kept eating.

  “I was told that the ATF has a warrant for Curtis Blevins, but he escaped,” Zetzman said.

  I swallowed a mouthful of food and took a long sip of the screwdriver.

  “Dammit, Taylor,” Zetzman said. “I answered your questions. The least you can do is answer mine.”

  He had a point. At the same time, I told myself, I might be able to strengthen my own cause.

  I pointed at his notebook and said, “Close that.”

  Zetzman did.

  “I promised the powers that be that I wouldn’t answer any questions,” I said. You have to admit there are damn few people who are capable of lying with greater dexterity than I can. “I would be happy, though, to ask a few questions if you don’t attach my name to them.”

  Zetzman set his pen on top of the closed notebook.

  “All right,” he said. “Off the record.”

  “Who set the bomb that blew up the silica sand silo?”

  “Was it Blevins?”

  “I’m not saying anything, I’m just asking.”

  “All right.”

  “Who shot Mayor Franson?”

  “You mean…”

  “Who shot his own daughter in St. Paul seven days ago?”

  “Sorry, what? This girl you were asking about, Emily Denys. She was Blevins’s daughter?”

  “Julie Elizabeth Blevins was her real name, only you didn’t hear it from me. I suggest you contact the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office for confirmation.”

  “Damn, Taylor. Damn.”

  “Now,
leave me to my breakfast. Oh, and Skip? We never had this conversation.”

  He smiled and scurried away, happy about the scoop that I knew he would print in the Record before the week was out; a story that I was sure David Helin would happily quote to Marianne Haukass and a jury, should it come to that.

  I finished my breakfast, drained both the screwdriver and my mug of black coffee, and stood up.

  “My work here is done,” I announced.

  Unfortunately, no one was listening.

  * * *

  I paid for my meal and left the restaurant. I gave Everheart a quick wave as I passed through the lobby to the carpeted staircase that led to a long second-floor corridor with rooms parceled out equally on both sides. There was another flight of stairs at the far end of the corridor that led to the parking lot, as well as a small room filled with vending and ice machines. A large double-pane window looked down on all of it. The sun was shining brightly through the window.

  It was because the sun was at his back that the man who stepped out of the vending room appeared as a shadow to me. The shadow didn’t move, just stood there looking more or less in my direction. I was ten feet from my room when he started shooting.

  He shot high. A steady rat-a-tat-tat of bullets tore into the walls and ceiling above me.

  I went low, diving to the floor.

  My right hand found the Beretta behind my back and pulled it from my jeans.

  The man ceased firing his automatic rifle for a moment.

  Then promptly resumed shooting.

  This time he aimed low. Bullets tore into the floor only a foot or so in front of my head, sending shards of wood and carpet fibers flying through the air.

  I gripped the Beretta in both hands and returned fire.

  I was off target, too, the bullets slamming into the wall just off his right shoulder.

  He fired again. This time his aim was even wilder. Bullets seemed to fly everywhere, yet somehow managed to avoid hitting me.

  I fired again.

  And missed.

  The shadow turned and started running. He became a man when he stepped into the sunlight at the end of the corridor—Curtis Blevins. I could see him fumbling with a magazine, trying to reload his assault rifle as he reached the staircase and started down.

  I jumped to my feet and began pursuit.

  Room doors opened. Frightened faces peered out at me. I yelled at them as I passed.