Side by Side

by John Ramsey Miller

  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 isn’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.

  “I always said Massey would be trouble,” Clayton told the woman.

  “That need not concern you,” she said. “I made the decision, which was mine to make.”

  “Massey’s reputation isn’t what it is because anyone can control him. You should never ever mix emotion—especially not revenge—with business. And this is very delicate business with a fortune at stake.”

  “I know what’s at stake here,” she hissed. “I know Massey a lot better than you do.”

  Clayton shrugged. He had no choice but to go with the flow, to follow orders. He knew that either he would make a fortune with this woman, or he would be a dead man.

  He couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could have ever called her “Precious.” Major Antonia Keen was about as precious as an iceberg.

  34

  Drenched in sweat, Lucy Dockery listened.

  The trailer door burst open and a familiar figure entered. Heart pounding, Lucy froze in the doorway of the bedroom, holding Elijah to her. Her heart skipped a beat and she felt a hollow burn of acid churning in her gut. It wasn’t the woman.

  “Wail, hail,” Scaly-hands called, smiling at her across the twenty feet that separated them. “You’re up and about, I see. I reckon Dixie ain’t back yet.” He took off his wet cotton duster and tossed it over the cold potbelly stove. His eyes were locked on her, his tongue darting in and out from the crack between rows of yellow teeth. He rubbed his hands together as he appraised her.

  “You are a perty sight in that nightgown. A perty sight indeed.”

  Lucy stood frozen, studying the man whose greedy eyes were broadcasting that his ugly mind was cobbling together something horrible. This hideous monster, driven by a lust that smoldered in a vile and focused anger, wanted her. If she’d found a weapon, now would be when to use it, but the only thing between him and her was Elijah, who clung to his mother like a terrified monkey.

  “She’s coming back,” Lucy told him. As frightening as the thought of the big woman was, Lucy prayed that she would come. If Dixie couldn’t prevent him from doing what he wanted to do to her, probably no one could. He hadn’t hurt her before and she believed that was only because Dixie had been in the trailer.

  “Why don’t you shuck off those panties?” he said, moving closer.

  “Please,” Lucy said weakly. “Not in front of my baby.” She felt a wave of self-revulsion for using Elijah as a shield, and she wished she could somehow kill the man. She could kill him.

  “Why not? Ain’t like he’ll remember it. People doing what nature wants them to ain’t bad for kids. Hell, I grew up seeing people doing the dirty deed.” His smile turned her blood to ice.

  “Please?” she begged, trembling. “Please don’t do this.”

  “Come out here,” he ordered. “Less you want me to come in there where it’s nice and dark.” He stared down at her legs as she came into the kitchen. She saw that he liked the fact that she was afraid. She also saw something that looked like splattered blood on his shirt and on his hands and neck.

  Reaching out suddenly, he peeled Elijah off Lucy, held the screaming child up in the air by his arm, opened the bathroom door, and plopped the child down on the floor beside the toilet. Elijah howled. Scaly-hands closed the door as the baby tried to stand.

  Lucy sprang at the man’s powerful shoulders and reached around to scratch out his eyes. He elbowed Lucy in the jaw, sending her sprawling, her head bouncing against the refrigerator door.

  As he approached, Lucy scuttled back against the bedroom doorjamb.

  “You rich gals all like it rough,” he said. “You get off on big old boys treating you like two-dollar whores. You need what Buck’s got, honey. And Buck’s got a whole lot of what you need.”

  As he talked he unbuckled his belt. As he came toward her he pulled it free and wrapped it once around his fist so it would stay in place while he used it on her.

  I can take it, Lucy thought. I can take whatever he can do, and I will get on the other side of this, for Elijah’s sake.

  A six-letter word for being scared witless.

  T-E-R-R-O-R

  She closed her eyes, drew herself into a ball, and clenched her teeth, waiting.

  35

  Some neighborhoods lend themselves to surveillance. Click Smoot’s wasn’t one of them. On Click’s block, a sidewalk ran only on his side of the street, while the front lawns on the other side sloped up to the home sites from the naked curb.

  Click lived at the tail end of a narrow street in a sleepy Charlotte neighborhood, so there was no through traffic to speak of. Here, except when someone had visitors, cars were parked in the garages or driveways. The houses had been built in the 1960s on land that was probably inexpensive. The homes took up no more than a quarter of their well-kept lots, and most of the homes contained young, upwardly mobile couples—with or without children—or older people who had lived there a long time. Winter had seen a thousand neighborhoods like it and knew that the residents might not be on first-name terms, but they would be aware of each other to the point where two strangers sitting in the only parked car on the street were going to be noticed. He also knew that when somebody here called the cops, they came.

  If the cops showed up, Winter and Alexa were upright citizens, and there was no law against legitimate citizens sitting in a car talking, or contemplating real estate, or checking the amount of traffic the street saw, or waiting for the Rapture. There was no curfew for white-bread people in white-bread suburban neighborhoods. The problem was that Click would be as likely to notice them here as anyone else. And if the cops pulled up and asked questions, Alexa might end up showing her badge, and the cops might be friendly enough with Click’s family to warn him. They couldn’t take that chance.

  The house two up and across the street from Click’s had a steep driveway and a lot of toys in the yard. A Plymouth minivan and a Volvo sedan were shoulder to shoulder at the top of the incline. That driveway seemed the most advantageous spot from which to watch the front of Click’s house.

  Winter parked behind the Volvo, the vehicle nearest to the wall of shrubbery, and Alexa parked beside him. They walked to the door and he rang the bell. A tall man in his early thirties opened the door and, when he saw that the people standing on his porch were strangers, dialed down his smile. Somewhere behind him small children were making dinnertime-is-over racket.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  Alexa held up her badge and his smile vanished behind a cloud of confusion.

  “I’m FBI Special Agent Alexa Keen.”

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

  “No trouble,” she said.

  “It isn’t every day the FBI shows up at my door.” His smile was making an effort to come back.

  “We’d like to park in your driveway, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Alexa answered. “But it doesn’t involve you, Mr. . . .?”

  “Latham. Charles Latham.”

  A blond-haired woman wearing gray sweats appeared at the throat of the hallway. A small child came from the same direction to stand beside her, one hand gripping her mother’s pant leg.

  “Charles?” the blond woman said, raising an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “It’s the FBI, Patty,” he told her, then turned back to Alexa and Charles. “Please come in,” he said. “You’re getting wet.”

  Alexa stepped inside, and Winter followed her.

  The woman approached them, the child shadowing her. She crossed her arms. “What can we do for you?”

  “Ma�
�am,” Alexa said. “We were just asking for permission to park two vehicles in your driveway for a little while.”

  “Our driveway? What for?”

  “What’s a while?” Charles said.

  Alexa shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “And they can’t tell us why,” Charles told his wife.

  “I’m sorry,” Alexa said. “I would if I could. Really.”

  “I think we should tell them,” Winter said.

  Alexa turned her eyes on Winter and cocked her head. After a few seconds, she nodded her approval.

  “We’re part of a strike force,” Winter told the Lathams. “We’re staking out a house a few blocks away, and we have about a dozen vehicles that have to stay out of sight until it’s time to converge, when we get the order. We don’t know how long that will take, because we don’t control what the subjects do or when they do it. We’ll be long gone before you wake up in the morning.” Winter turned on his warmest smile.

  Patty Latham said, “I don’t have a problem with it. Charles?”

  “Fine by me,” he said. “We can sleep soundly knowing we have the FBI watching over us.”

  “I’ll make you two a thermos of coffee,” Patty offered. “When you go, just leave the container on the side porch. There’s a half bath just inside the side door. I’ll leave it unlocked in case you need it. Just turn the lock before you leave.”

  “That would be greatly appreciated,” Alexa said.

  “The least we can do,” Charles Latham said.

  “And I expect a few ham sandwiches wouldn’t hurt,” Patty said, lifting the towheaded child up onto her hip.

  “I can’t see where it would hurt a thing,” Winter agreed.