Bad Blood

by John Sandford

  Now, they were looking right at him. He had nothing to do with Kelly Baker, but he knew about it, and that was enough. That was their message. They were floating a deal, but if the church were blown up, no deal would stick. Not for him. He’d been a boy in the church, used by older men, and then he got to be a man, and had used the younger boys as he had been used . . . and nobody in the World of Law would forgive that.

  He had more than thirteen hundred dollars in the bank, and a good paid-off F250, only six years old. He could still run to San Francisco, sell the truck, move down to a little-used Tacoma, license it in a fake company name, put together a Mexican crew from the Wal-Mart slave markets, live underground. . . .

  He put the first knuckle of his right fist into his mouth and bit until it hurt. What to do?

  Twenty minutes after the cops left, he’d cooled down, and he called Emmett Einstadt. “I need to see you. The sooner the better. I think . . . at the Blue Earth rest stop.”

  “Blue Earth? What are you talking about, Harvey?”

  “Because we need to see who comes in after us. That’s why. I need to talk to you, and we need to see who comes in after us. Be there. One hour from now, exactly. Don’t get there one minute early, or one minute late. If you aren’t there, you won’t be seeing me again. Ever.”

  There was a long silence as Einstadt took that in. He started, “Harvey—”

  “I’m not fooling around here, Emmett, and I’m not going to talk about it on any phone or cell phone or any other way, or in any building,” Loewe said, and the panic was bleeding into the phone. “You be there.”

  Loewe hung up and watched the phone: when it didn’t ring, he figured Einstadt would be there.

  AND HE WAS.

  He followed Einstadt’s Silverado into the highway rest stop, parked next to him. The Silverado had a crew cab, and he climbed out of his Ford and into the back of the Chevy. Einstadt turned half-sideways in the driver’s seat to take him in. “What in the heck was so blamed urgent—”

  “The cops came this morning. The sheriff and the state guy, whatever his name is. Flowers. They’ve hooked up Jake Flood and Kelly Baker, they’ve got information coming from someplace, I don’t know where. But they know, Emmett, or they’re about to find out. They were hinting around that I could deal with them. . . .”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. What did you want me to say? That I fucked Jacky Shoen last week?”

  “Watch your language, Harvey,” Einstadt said. “You’re talking to the Senior.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Senior, if they crack the church, you’re going to spend your senior days in the state penitentiary. The only lucky thing for you is, you’re too old to last long. They told me: thirty years. Thirty years for knowing about Kelly. You think somebody won’t crack, looking at thirty years?”

  “What else?”

  Loewe had the old man’s attention now: his green eyes were half-shut, focused.

  “Oh, heck, they wanted to know if I’d had a relationship with Bob Tripp, they wanted to know about my relationship with Kelly Baker. They wanted to know if she had a sexual relationship with Jake—they’re that far down the road, Emmett. They asked about Birdy Olms—”

  “What about Birdy?”

  “I don’t know. They asked where she went. I said I didn’t know . . . ’cause I don’t.”

  Einstadt was peering at him.

  Loewe asked, “Do you know?”

  Einstadt turned away, then said, almost pensively, into the windshield, “Flowers was down at the Main Street, asked about Liberty.”

  Loewe bobbed his head and said, “Well, there you go, Emmett. There’s only one way to know about Liberty—somebody told him.”

  “All right,” Einstadt said. “I’m going to talk to some of the others. We’ll figure this out. You sit tight—you don’t know anything about anything. We’ll ride it out. We had a problem like this thirty years back, rode it out.”

  “Emmett—”

  His voice harsh, a prophet’s voice, Einstadt said, “Keep down, keep your mouth shut. Like you said, if you talk about anything, you’re gone. It’s not only Jacky Shoen you fucked. If the whole thing comes out, there won’t be no deal strong enough for you.”

  They looked at each other for a minute, then Loewe said, his voice calmer, “I believe you can take care of it, Emmett. That’s why I called. But you need to know how serious this is. I’m going home. I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ll even pray. But you gotta do something.”

  Einstadt nodded and said, “Take off.”

  LOEWE GOT OUT of the Silverado, back into his Ford. Watched, slumped in his seat, as Einstadt wheeled out.

  Thought, San Francisco.

  His folks didn’t need him, with the crops in for the year. His old man could handle the winter work on his own.

  Loewe looked at his watch: he could go home, load up, and be in Omaha by dark. Thought about it a little more. Maybe not, he thought. If something happened, they could put out an alert to the highway patrols between here and there, and pick him up.

  He needed to sell the truck in Minnesota. Up in the Cities. List it on the Internet, Craigslist, with a low enough price, and it’d be gone in a day. Get a bank draft for it, put it in the bank, then yank the money out in cash. Take off. Three days. That way, if something broke, they couldn’t track him across the country. . . .

  EINSTADT PULLED OUT of the rest stop thinking about those damn women. He didn’t worry about Liberty, because Liberty was dead, and there wasn’t anything anybody could do about that, including the World of Law. He didn’t worry much—maybe a little—about Loewe, because Loewe had a taste for the boys, and he was right: if the World of Law found out about it, they’d call him a predator and put him in jail forever. So he would keep his mouth shut.

  But those damn women: Kathleen Spooner and Birdy Olms. Spooner had gone and shot Crocker and should never have done that. Never. Crocker was a cop, and the other cops would never let go, now that they knew he’d been murdered.

  And Flowers, blabbing all over the place, had hinted that there was some DNA involved. DNA was the latest curse from the World of Law. If they had DNA on her, they could use her as a wedge to open up everything.

  Then there was Birdy. Birdy wouldn’t listen to anybody about anything. Even after her initiation, she’d continued to fight them. Finally, she’d run away. In some ways, it was a relief; in other ways, a threat. She was still out there, somewhere. They’d never heard a peep from her, but she’d cleaned out her husband’s cash and tax account before she left, and had enough cash to hide pretty thoroughly.

  Now, maybe, they should take another stab at finding her.

  First, something had to be done about Spooner. He thought about that for a long time, to the first exit, across the bridge, back onto I-90, and finally called his oldest son, Leonard, and told him they needed to meet. “Tell Junior to be there. . . . We’ve got a problem.”

  LEONARD AND JUNIOR were hard men in their forties, both farmers, dark hair, dark eyes, perpetual five o’clock shadows across the saturnine faces they’d inherited from their mother. They met at Emmett Einstadt’s house on the hill, climbing up the driveway past the line of bare apple trees, Concord grape arbors, and snow-covered garden flats.

  Einstadt told them what he thought: that as desperate an act as it was, Spooner had to be eliminated. They listened wordlessly, then Leonard looked at Emmett, and at Junior, and asked, “What do you think?”

  “Makes me sour just thinking about it, but Father’s right,” Junior said. “If they’re really testing for her DNA, I don’t know how long that takes, but it can’t be too long. So we’ll have to do it soon.”

  All three of them had grown and butchered animals, so death was not an abstract concept to them. They could do it; the question was, How?

  Einstadt said, “She’s always liked you, Leonard. You could send Mary and the kids on the way, tonight, get he
r there after they’re gone. Get it done, take her over to Junior’s, get her in the ground. Out in the woodlot, we’ve been in there working. It’s supposed to snow again tomorrow night. Once it snows—”

  “Give me the creeps, knowing she’s there,” Junior said.

  “You can live with it,” his father said, and Junior nodded.

  “What about her car?” Leonard asked.

  “Put it in Junior’s barn, stack hay around it. Soon as we’ve got a little space, the two of you put it on a trailer, drive it to Detroit, leave it in the street with the keys inside, drive back.”

  “That’s a risk,” Leonard said.

  “We’ve got to take some risks,” Einstadt said. “If Kathleen hadn’t killed Crocker . . .”

  “But she’s right about Crocker. He might’ve talked.”

  “If she’d come and talked to us, we could have handled that. She didn’t, and so now she’s got to pay,” Einstadt said.

  “We all ought to sell out, go up to Alberta and start another colony up there,” Junior said.

  “Maybe someday,” Einstadt said, “but we can’t right now. Right now, we’ve got to do something about Katheen. And I’ve been thinking: here’s how we do it, keeping in mind that gun of hers.”

  THEY WORKED IT OUT in detail, right down to the rope they’d use, and then Leonard went to his home phone to call her, with the other two listening in on handsets in the living room and the upstairs bedroom. They called on her cell phone, and she answered on the second ring.

  Leonard said, “We need to talk, seriously, Kathleen. The police are looking for Birdy. We know where she is—she’s down in Dallas—and somebody’s got to go down there and . . . settle her. We thought of you.”

  After a silence, she said, “Where in Dallas?”

  “Dad’s got the exact address, I don’t know it myself. But they’re going for her. What we want to do is, meet here at my place tonight, while the others are headed off to church, figure out exactly what we want to do, and then get it done. We need to set it up so you can get down there, do it, and get back before anybody notices. We’re thinking next weekend, so there’ll be two days. Junior will drive down with you. Go down in one shot, twelve hours straight through, trade driving, one of you sleeping in the back of the truck. Do the whole thing in twenty-six hours.”

  “I’ll call you back in two minutes. I’m going to take a cigarette break outside,” she said.

  The three of them looked at their phones until she called back, and when she did, she said, “Don’t ever think I’m as much as a dumbass as you Einstadts are,” she said. “The chances of my meeting with you, in your farmhouse, at night, are zero. You get me in there, wring my neck, and you’re just goddamn dumb enough to think that would solve your problems. But it wouldn’t, it’d just get you in deeper. This Flowers guy, from what I hear, is about to tear the ass off the World of Spirit. You got one chance, and I’m it. And I’m going to give you the chance. Are you listening to this, Emmett?”

  Emmett, embarrassed, didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then, grudgingly, “Yeah.”

  She said, “You come down to my house, you and Leonard. No guns, but I’ll have mine, and I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. Then I’m going to let you talk me out of it. By the way, I’ve been figuring, one thing and another, and I figure the church can raise two hundred thousand dollars without breaking much of a sweat. Hell, Emmett, you could raise it by yourself, probably. I’m gonna need that money, and soon.”

  Emmett said, “I don’t think—”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Emmett. I’ve been living out here all my life, and I know who’s got what. And when I tell you the plan, I don’t think you’ll worry too much about the money. So: one hour, at my place. No guns.”

  She hung up, and the Einstadts looked at each other for a few seconds, and then Junior asked, “Are we going?”

  Emmett Einstadt nodded and said, “Not much choice. She’s in deeper than we are—she’s a cop killer—so it couldn’t really be a trap.”

  Leonard asked, “I wonder how she knew we were going to wring her neck?”

  “Let’s you and me find out,” Emmett said.

  LEONARD HAD SENT his wife, Mary, and the three kids off to the supermarket, to keep the meeting with his father close to the vest. He and Emmett left for Jackson, and Junior sat in the living room, looking out the window, until Mary’s Ford Explorer turned up the drive.

  She met him with a smile in the driveway—she always liked him—and he helped carry the groceries in. The three kids were still too small to have received the Spirit, and they put them in the front room to watch television and went up the stairs.

  Mary, a jolly blonde, said, “You always had a hard time waiting, on meeting nights, didn’t ya?” and Junior helped her unbutton her blouse and she helped him undo his pants and she fell back on the bed, all white as marble—Junior loved the blondes, he told his pals, because you could see so much more—and she said, “How do you want this, brother? You want it quick, or you want something you can watch?”

  IN JACKSON, the night was just coming on when the Einstadts left the truck in the street and crunched up the packed snow on the driveway to Spooner’s place. Spooner had been looking for them. She opened the side door, waved them upstairs, then backed away into the living room, where she’d set a chair against the wall. She dropped down into the chair with a pistol in each hand. She did like the feel of them.

  The Einstadts came in, checked the guns, and she pointed the men at the couch. When they were sitting, she asked, “Whose harebrained idea was it to bring up Birdy?”

  Emmett Einstadt said, “Not harebrained. They’ve got her name and they’re looking for her. If she’s still living under it, they could find her. She could be a real danger.”

  “But you don’t know that she lives in Dallas,” Spooner said.

  “No.”

  Leonard said, “What’s this big idea you’ve got, that’s gonna save us all?”

  She said, “I want you to talk me out of it. If you can’t, I’m gonna go ahead.”

  “What is it?” Emmett asked.

  “I’m gonna confess.”

  The Einstadts looked at each other, as though they might have heard wrong, and Emmett asked, “What the heck are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to confess that I was there when Jim killed himself,” Spooner said. “I’m going to confess that I was sucking his cock, and I’m going to confess that he might have been scared because they were afraid they’d find his DNA on the Tripp boy, and then on Kelly Baker. And they’re looking for Liberty, so I’m going to give them Liberty. What do you think?”

  Emmett said, “You should have your mouth washed out with soap. If you can’t control your language—”

  “Give me a fuckin’ break, Emmett,” Spooner said. “You been in my face as often as any—if I wasn’t sucking your cock, what was I doing? Felt like suckin’ to me.”

  “Sexual contact—”

  “Hold the bullshit, Emmett. Okay? Just this once?”

  Emmett said, “You don’t have to give them Liberty. They’ve already got Liberty.” He recounted Loewe’s story of his interview with Flowers and Coakley.

  “All the better,” Spooner said. “They don’t know that I know about that—so when I give them Liberty, I won’t be giving them anything new, and at the same time, it’ll make it seem like I’m telling the truth.”

  Leonard cut to the heart of it: “Your idea can’t be as goofy as it sounds. I’m still listening.”

  So she told them about it, in detail.

  13

  A battered Ford F350 dually sat next to the barn when Virgil turned up the Floods’ driveway, and as he got to the top of the rise, a short, square man came out of the barn with a dead chicken in his hands. He’d been plucking it, Virgil realized when he got out of the truck: he could smell the hot, wet feathers.

  The man said, “Who’re you?”

  “Virgil Flowers, Bureau of Crimin
al Apprehension,” Virgil said. “I’m here to talk to Mrs. Flood. Is she in?”

  “This is not a good time,” the man said. He lifted the chicken: “I’m tied up.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “Wally Rooney. . . . I’m helping Alma with her chores,” the man said.

  “Nice of you,” Virgil said. “But my interview with Mrs. Flood will be confidential, anyway, so—”

  “She’s got the right to a lawyer, don’t she?” Rooney asked.

  “Well, yeah,” Virgil said. “Though to tell you the truth, I didn’t know she needed one. If we have to go through all that, we’d have to take her down to the sheriff’s office. . . . I just thought it’d be easier to have a chat.”

  Rooney gestured with the chicken again, and Virgil took that as assent. “If she doesn’t want to talk to me, I’ll certainly be happy to arrange for a lawyer to sit with her while I do,” he said. “Because I am going to talk to her.”

  HELEN MET VIRGIL at the door, said, “You again,” but she said it with a smile, and then a wink, and the wink actually startled him, coming from a twelve-year-old. Maybe she’d picked it up from an old-timey movie, he thought, and in an old-timey movie, it would have been called a come-on.

  Interesting.

  He followed her into the house, and Helen called ahead, “Mr. Flowers is here again,” and she used his name with a familiarity that suggested that he’d been talked about.

  Alma Flood was sitting on a platform rocker, as morose as she’d been during the first visit, with the Bible still at her arm. She said, “My father isn’t here—”

  “I actually wanted to talk to you,” he said. He looked at the girl. “Privately.”