Smoke & Mirrors

by John Ramsey Miller

  “TPP?”

  “Tested pumpkin positive. Means if you’d shined a light in my ear my face would have lit up like a jack-o-lantern.”

  Winter laughed, and Ruger growled at him for it.

  “When I got back we had one last weekend in a Memphis motel to try and rekindle something. Playing couple was great at first, but we ended up fighting, said terrible things to each other. She left, and I got drunk. I met a woman in a club and she came back to the motel with me. Nothing happened—at least I don’t think it did—because I passed out in a state of undress. Leigh had a change of heart, drove back, and the gal opened the room door wearing her panties and bra. I was out in bed, and Leigh didn’t ever want to speak to me again, and so for a long time, she didn’t.”

  “Man, oh man,” Winter said, shaking his head slowly, picturing Leigh standing there looking at the unsteady and scantily clad woman at the door, not to mention a naked Brad passed out across the mattress. “I can imagine that might’ve been hard to explain away.”

  “Before I got out, she ran off and married Jacob Gardner, one of those handsome guys who says all the right things to everybody, but once the newness wears off you can see he’s an egotistical, insincere rooster. His family had an old name and not much money left, though nobody knew it until everything collapsed after he married Leigh. He’s the kind of guy who always has a new set of best friends, and he climbs socially, or he did as long as there were fresh rungs available. She got pregnant, they got married, and she played mother hen and ran the place with her father while old Jake played golf and dabbled in dabbling.”

  “You never tried to patch it up after Memphis?”

  “The ice never thawed and I went to Ole Miss. Once Leigh decides something, that’s it in stone. My father’s reputation here gave me an initial edge with voters because he brought about half the population of Tunica County into the world. All I need to stay in office is to have his patients vote for me.” Brad smiled and patted his dog. “I expect the people around here vote for him, not me. I’m trying to change that.”

  They talked on, about their friends in common, their law enforcement experiences, farming, and county politics. Winter told Brad about how he’d met Faith Ann and explained how she had become like a daughter to him and Sean. After that, he excused himself and called Sean’s cell phone.

  “Hey, cowboy,” Sean answered. “Where you staying?”

  “Call me Deputy Massey…again. I’m staying with my new boss, the sheriff. Where are you guys?”

  “Have you leveled with him about Styer?”

  “I haven’t decided how much to tell him. I think I’ll wait for the DNA comparison.”

  “Tell him, Winter. Don’t let him be vulnerable because he doesn’t know what he’s dealing with.”

  “Maybe it’s time.”

  “Yeah. Just in case, he should know. Faith Ann wants to visit Graceland, so I thought we’d stay a couple of days.”

  “I’d rather y’all would go on home. I’d feel…”

  “I thought we’d eat at that rib place you told me about.”

  “Rendezvous. Yeah. It’s close to the Peabody.”

  “Any objections to our staying over? He won’t bother us. Besides, he’s there, right?”

  “You’re right, Sean. But I’ll be worried and if I’m worried…”

  “Okay. We’ll leave tomorrow morning at eight,” Sean said. She was the strongest woman Winter had ever known, but she also knew when to give in. It was one of the things he loved most about her.

  “Styer won’t go after you guys at home.”

  Winter spoke briefly and wistfully to Rush, Faith Ann, and Olivia before he hung up and returned to the den.

  “I think it’s time you knew who I think we’re probably dealing with,” Winter said quietly. “How much do you know about me, what I’ve been involved with in the past?”

  Brad fed Ruger what was left of his burger as he spoke. “I’ve heard some things. The Tampa courtroom shootings. I know there was some kind of big incident outside New Orleans a few years back with Sam Manelli’s gang, and another one there a little over two years ago. And I know there was an incident in South Carolina involving the trial of Colonel Bryce, some rogue military intelligence officers, and the kidnapping of a judge’s daughter and her child.”

  Winter nodded and said, “Brad, what I am going to tell you has to remain between the two of us. If you tell anybody I told you what I’m going to tell you, I’ll deny it.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Styer is a professional assassin from the Eastern Bloc who used to trade in seemingly impossible-to-kill targets, first for the KGB’s elite Special Situations Unit, and after the wall came down, for a private murder-for-hire organization. When I sent your toothpick to the lab, I also sent them Styer’s DNA. I got it from a scented toothpick he left in a rental car in New Orleans. I’m having that sample compared to your toothpick, and if it matches, we’re going from bad to worse real fast. I’ve gotten what little I know about this guy from people who know things I don’t. They talked to me because they hoped I might somehow lead them to him.”

  Brad crossed his legs at the ankles.

  “Paulus Styer was born in East Germany and sent to the Soviet Union where he was groomed to be a weapon of selective destruction. He became a world-class professional assassin—a human chameleon who vanished two years ago after failing to kill me.”

  “You were his target?”

  “He was told I was his target. The CIA used a hit on me to get Styer in the field so they could take him out when he made his move on me. They underestimated Styer and sent a single professional to kill him, but Styer found out the hit was a ploy and escaped. Faith Ann’s uncle, my friend Hank Trammel, is a cripple, and his wife, Millie, was killed. Faith Ann saw Styer run them over with an SUV merely to manipulate me into a death game. He has a compulsion to show his victims, just before he kills them, how amazingly talented he is. I guess since he can’t show the world his genius, he plays to an audience of two—himself and his target.”

  “He tried to kill you and failed?”

  “He easily could have, but he decided not to. Look, nothing he does is without purpose. Maybe he killed Sherry Adams for another reason, but he definitely used that murder as bait to get me here. It’s all a game with him. He isn’t part of the same reality normal people share.”

  “Seems really farfetched,” Brad said. “He knew I’d go right to you?”

  “He is a grand master of manipulation.”

  “Can you take him?”

  “Only if the playing field is slanted in my favor. Styer is way out of my class. In a toe-to-toe gunfight, I’d have an even chance. But outside that scenario, my odds crash.”

  “Could you…I don’t know…contact the CIA for help getting him?”

  Winter sat back and shook his head. “Asking the part of the CIA I’m talking about for help is the last thing we want to do. Be like asking a pack of starving wolves to guard your henhouse.”

  29

  AFTER BEING KEPT BLINDFOLDED, GAGGED, AND tied up on the mattress in the back of her abductor’s van for what seemed like hours, Cynthia Gardner found her self fully awake and completely alone.

  The guy had to be some kind of serial killer or rapist or something.

  Although she couldn’t see anything, she knew that he had taken her back to the equipment shed. When he jerked the tarp off her body, she smelled the diesel and the cool earth floor of the barn.

  “We’re going to be here for a while. I’ll let you eat and use the portable toilet, but remember my warning. You’ll be spending the night here. You have any problem with that?”

  Cynthia shook her head. As soon as her mother figured out she wasn’t at her grandmother’s she would be FTFT—freaking the fuck totally. But if he had let her live this long, she hoped the bastard was going to ransom her, and her mother would pay, and maybe he’d let her go home. She couldn’t believe Jack would get her kidnapped, but h
e was certainly a man who liked money. It worried her, though, that the man hadn’t bothered to hide his face from her. That could mean he was going to kill her, but it might also mean he was from out of the area and figured she couldn’t identify him because they wouldn’t catch him. Jack was smart and he probably didn’t figure she’d know he was involved. He would probably think she was that dumb, the smug bastard.

  She wondered if the man was serious about killing her if she tried to escape. Probably not, but doing what he said made sense. No sense pushing him.

  He untied her hands and feet and led her to the toilet. She reached up to free the gag and he slapped her so hard she almost fell. Stunned, tears blurred her vision.

  “Nothing you have to say is of any interest to me,” he told her sternly. “Do your business.”

  Nodding, she turned with her back to the seat and looked pointedly at him, waiting for him to close the door, but he just held it open and stared back at her. Her bladder was bursting, so she bit her lip, looked at the floor, and slowly undid her jeans.

  After she finished, he led her back to the van and retied her. She felt a sharp pain in the back of her arm and realized, when he pulled back, that he was holding a syringe. She protested in a low growl, but the sensation of floating in space killed the sound. She closed her eyes. Oblivion seemed like a good idea.

  30

  AFTER MEETING WITH THE SHERIFF AND HIS DEPUTY, Albert White spent several hours guzzling coffee while reviewing the camera captures of David Scotoni seated at the blackjack table, and that of the surrounding tables. Nothing he saw indicated that Scotoni was being monitored by anybody who might be the mysterious Pablo. Of course, he erased the eight-minute section of the tape that slowed Mulvane watching Scotoni from every camera that had recorded it.

  Albert figured Pablo killed Beals, probably because Jack was nosy, or knew something that the guy thought threatened his future. Professionals hate curiosity—and witnesses. And they could be paranoid.

  Several of the cameras covering the parking area caught Scotoni coming from his rental car and returning to it seven hours later. Albert erased the images of Beals following Scotoni to his car, getting into his Blazer, and trailing Scotoni. No cars seemed to have followed Beals from the lot. With selective edits he could leave footage of Scotoni leaving without a tail. He would have given the sheriff the footage of Beals, which could only make the case against Beals stronger—but Mulvane had decided he would tell the sheriff that Beals had indeed been in the casino while Scotoni was gambling—and had left an hour before the young cheater did, even if it gave Barnett a reason to dig deeper. That was better than being caught in a lie. But Albert wasn’t going to give Barnett the keys to his own cell if he could help it.

  Legally speaking, whatever Beals had told the kid was hearsay, and what could they prove? Barnett was just a small town sheriff, and he had a department packed with dim bulbs, drinking coffee and making their assholes’ wages aside from what they could make on the sly. Without Beals to testify about Albert’s partnership in picking off a lucky shit-heel here and there, this would probably go away. Anyway, Albert knew that nothing connected the two of them to each other.

  Sheriff Barnett had less in common with his two more immediate predecessors than a rooster had with a python. Barnett never came into any of the casinos unless an investigation led him there, and he had enough of his own money to make him risky to try to bribe. Plus he was a straight arrow.

  White had never before seen the new deputy who accompanied the sheriff. There was something about the name, Massey, that seemed vaguely familiar, and he had been trying to make the connection by not trying hard to do so. A psychologist once told him that thinking on anything too hard often drove the information deeper into the recesses of your mind.

  He made a still print of the deputy, wrote Massey? on the bottom border, and filed it in the cabinet. The casino kept files on any and all politicians and law enforcement officers they came in contact with. He could make inquiries later.

  What made Albert White so valuable to the casino was his commitment to protect the casino’s profits to the best of his ability. He knew how to keep his mouth shut and he made sure he had the right people on his staff. Albert collected intelligence, fed it into the computers for cross-referencing and storage, and evaluated it for threats. After many years in law enforcement, he had discovered that the real secret of being successful lay in knowing not just what criminals were thinking, but how law enforcement officers thought and acted. It was all about staying on top of things, and following your instincts. For now, at least, this was familiar territory.

  31

  WINTER HAD BEEN UP SINCE FOUR THAT MORNING, so after eating he had gone upstairs for a shower and a few hours of shuteye. Lying in Brad Barnett’s guest bed, staring up into the darkness, he realized that despite his burning desire to pay the monster back for what he had done to Millie and Hank Trammel, the last person on earth he wanted to come face-to-face with was Paulus Styer. Styer was more single-purpose machine than human being, and he killed with less thought than a smoker gave to crushing out a cigarette.

  There was no doubt in his mind that Leigh Gardner had been the sniper’s target. But why would Styer be targeting a lady farmer in Mississippi? Could Styer be so desperate for work that he would take on what had to be a low-paying assignment?

  Winter closed his eyes and yawned. If Styer had left the toothpick and the card, he had fired the rifle, because according to everything Winter had learned about him, he killed alone. He didn’t share the thing that made him tick—his ego wouldn’t allow it.

  The targets had something in common, and he had to figure out their connection. Later. Now, he would sleep.

  32

  FRIDAY

  AT FIVE A.M., A STEAMING MUG OF COFFEE BESIDE him, Winter sat at the kitchen table and picked up the stack of Beals’s DVDs he’d taken from the wall safe. Each of the jewel cases was labeled with a date, spanning the past two and a half years. Brad had placed a small TV set with a DVD player built into it on the table, and Winter opened the tray to feed it the first DVD. Brad had spent two hours at his office to tie up loose ends, since he knew his day would be taken up with the homicides.

  For an hour Winter watched a series of sometimes shaky videos of people taken from inside a car, or through windows, exteriors and interiors of houses, close-ups of furniture in various anonymous rooms.

  He looked beside him at the stack of DVDs waiting to be viewed and frowned. He decided to start with the tapes dated from the past few months and work his way to the present. After all, if any of this was going to be helpful—like spotting a partner, or if by some miracle Beals had photographed Styer and had been killed for that—it would probably have been filmed recently.

  Flipping over the stack, Winter opened the last DVD Beals had made and inserted the disk dated six weeks earlier. After he watched it, he called Brad into the kitchen.

  Ten minutes later, Winter and Brad stared at the screen. On it, a white pickup truck pulled up and parked in a nondescript lot. The doors opened and Leigh and Hamp Gardner got out as the camera zoomed to follow them into a grocery store. Hamp said something to Leigh and she laughed and popped him on the shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ,” Brad said. “Beals was following them.”

  “So I thought.”

  As Winter spoke, the camera held its focus on the doors and Jack Beals exited the store carrying two plastic bags of groceries in one hand, reading a gun magazine as he walked to his Blazer. Winter didn’t think Beals was aware that he was being filmed—or that he knew he had walked past the Gardners.

  “Wait a minute. If it isn’t Beals taking the shots, he did have a partner,” Brad said excitedly.

  “Nope,” Winter said. “Nothing to say so on the DVDs. I’d bet Jack took the others, but I think Styer shot this one.”

  The camera stayed on the Blazer until Beals drove away. On the dashboard the camera operator had placed a postcard with the image fa
cing out.

  “What’s that on the card?” Brad asked.

  “A ferry,” Winter said.

  “The Mississippi River,” Brad said. “That’s the New Orleans skyline.”

  Winter nodded. “Canal Street Ferry. It’s a card from Styer to me. The ferry has meaning for him and me.”

  Brad said, “Maybe it’s someone else who’s been in New Orleans. After Katrina, this place was thick with refugees. Some stayed. Some of them were very bad people.”

  The rearview had been turned away in order not to capture the shooter’s reflection. They watched as the photographer trailed Beals home, took a long shot of Beals’s house as he drove slowly by. There followed a few seconds of close-ups of Beals’s front door, and then five minutes of the interior of Beals’s home, including the gunroom.

  “Was Styer following Leigh or Beals? Is that how he spotted Leigh? Maybe the killer, your Styer maybe, got the tag number on the Gardners’ truck or something and that was why he targeted them. Jesus, what the hell is this about?” Brad said, shaking his head as if to clear it.

  “It was definitely a leer from Styer,” Winter said. “Only he knows what this is all about. He’s screwing with my head. But he’s also giving us something to work with.”

  “Knowing it would confuse you? Us?”

  “It’s just part of the game,” Winter said, sighing.

  “Which part?” Brad asked.

  “His favorite part. The smoke and mirrors.”

  33

  AFTER VIEWING ENOUGH OF THE OTHER DVDS TO make sure they were worthless to their immediate investigation, Brad had returned to his office to count the cash they’d found in Beals’s safe.

  They hadn’t found anything in Beals’s house to explain the money in his wall safe. His computer, located in a drawer in the bedroom, contained nothing out of the ordinary. There were no password-protected files. They had his financial information and bank records, and copies of his IRS filings for the past five years. The computer tech said that Beals visited sites for dating, several for gun lovers and shooting aficionados, several militia groups in the western United States, and hard-core bondage pornography.