The Exiled

by Christopher Charles

  “Relax,” Raney said. “All we want is information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “You’ve seen the news, right? You know what happened yesterday.”

  Lewis nodded, pressed his back against the wall as though trying to slip through one of its corrugated grooves.

  “I ain’t mixed up in that,” he said.

  “What are you mixed up in?” Raney asked. “Let’s begin there.”

  “I got a habit,” the man said. “You seen it right off. But I don’t make the shit, and I don’t sell it. Just tell me what you want. If I can help, I’ll help. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Fair enough,” Raney said.

  He held out Grant’s photo.

  “Did you rent a truck to him?”

  “We rent a lot of trucks.”

  “Look closely.”

  Lewis held the picture by its edges, leaned in, then bolted back, eyes lost in his skull.

  “Stan sent you to fuck with me,” he said. “This ain’t the guy you’re looking for. No way. Can’t be.”

  He dropped the photo, let it lie on the asphalt. Raney picked it up.

  “Why don’t we go inside?” he said. “Since you took the trouble to break the lock.”

  Bay opened the door, caught a hot blast of stale smoke and sweat.

  “Jesus. Someone ought to buy you a goddamn window.”

  “We leave the door open, mostly.”

  Bay took Lewis by the shoulders, spun him around, steered him inside. There were papers strewn across every surface, empty bottles of hard liquor serving as paperweights. Every drawer busted, every filing cabinet spilling over. Cigarette ash lay like sawdust across the floor. Bay walked Lewis behind his desk, tilted his chair so that a binder and a stack of invoices slid off, then shoved him down.

  “How do you find anything in here?” Bay asked.

  “He doesn’t,” Raney said. “Who’s Stan?”

  “Stan?” Lewis said.

  Raney clapped his hands hard beside Lewis’s ear.

  “No stalling. We’re not going to rough you up, and we’re not going to offer you a drink to calm your nerves. Answer my questions or we’ll drop you in a holding cell and forget to tell anyone you’re there.”

  Lewis wiped his face with an oil-soaked rag, stared down at his feet.

  “Stan’s my brother.”

  “And he owns this place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re—what? The mechanic?”

  “More like the janitor,” Lewis said. “I clean the trucks, change the oil, sweep the lot. I do the grunt work, stay clear of the customers.”

  “Except when Stan’s away?”

  “Yeah, except when Stan’s away.”

  Raney held up Oscar’s picture a second time.

  “Stan was away the day this man came in?”

  “Yeah. Stan’s semiretired. Works half the week. Usually has a girl who covers, but she’s out pregnant. I swore up and down I could handle it. I swore to him. I said it would help get me turned around.”

  Raney scanned the room.

  “This isn’t the normal state of things, is it?”

  “No, it ain’t.”

  “You were looking for something? Something to do with Oscar Grant?”

  “Who?”

  “The man in the picture.”

  “He had a different name. Had IDs to back it up.”

  “But you’re sure it was him?” Bay asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Raney said. “Tell us everything.”

  “It’s him poisoned the dope?”

  “Might be,” Bay said.

  Lewis clawed the arms of his chair.

  “Sweet fucking Jesus,” he said. “The man paid me in meth. I’m gonna die, ain’t I?”

  “How long ago?” Raney asked.

  “Maybe two weeks.”

  “You’d be dead already. Now tell us.”

  Raney waited for Lewis to catch his breath, watched the red fade from his cheeks.

  “Go on, now,” he said.

  “The guy showed up late. Just before closing. Said he wanted to borrow a truck from then until morning. He’d have it back in ten hours. I said we only charged in twenty-four-hour cycles. That’s when he said we had friends in common. Said he knew what I was about. He laid the Baggies on the desk here. ‘Ten hours,’ he said. ‘No paperwork.’”

  “Let me guess,” Bay said. “You never saw the truck again.”

  “I know what happened to it, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A cop called Sunday morning. Wanted to know if we were missing any inventory. Said they found what could be one of ours burned to a skeleton up in the foothills. I told him our trucks were all accounted for, but I knew damn well what happened and who’d done it. I figured it had something to do with the meth. He’d been transporting it or using the trailer as a lab. But the cop said the truck was packed with normal shit. Furniture, clothes, electronics. All of it up in flames.”

  “So what were you searching for today?”

  “I wasn’t searching for nothing. Stan don’t know yet. I was tryin’ to make it look like we was robbed. Like they’d come for the cash and taken off in one of the trucks. I was gonna call it in from a pay phone.”

  “Why today?” Raney asked.

  “I figured the cops would be too busy to care. Maybe they’d send some rookie to take a report, and that’d be it.”

  “We did you a favor, then, by showing up,” Raney said. “If I were you, I’d put this place back in order and then come clean with your brother.”

  “No, I don’t think you would,” Lewis said. “Not if you was me. And not if he was your brother.”

  They sat in a café across the freeway from Adobe Rentals, drinking from outsized mugs, Bay clicking the mouse on his laptop, entering information, clicking again.

  “Here it is,” he said. “Just like the meth head described it. Arson on a county road. A hundred miles from Albuquerque.”

  “Keep looking and you’ll find a dealer turned up dead a little over two weeks ago.”

  “But why? Why not just burn his house down? And why burn the truck, too? Why not unload it and make a nice big barn fire?”

  “Some kind of ritual? A break with the past? The real question is, how did he get back to Albuquerque? Or to wherever he was going? Someone had to give him a lift.”

  “You think he’s got a friend in all this?”

  “Or in some of it. Maybe a friend who goes way back.”

  “A SEAL?”

  “Or a warden. Grant’s boss was the go-to character witness when Jonathan OD’d.”

  “I guess I know where we’re headed next.”

  Grant’s former workplace sat in the flattest part of the state—no trees, no hills, just sun bleaching the scrub, casting fake ponds on the asphalt.

  “This place is butt-ugly,” Bay said. “The cons oughta be glad someone bricked up the windows.”

  They parked in the visitors’ lot, checked their guns into small lockers, were escorted down a long corridor by a tired-looking CO. Warden Peterson sat at his desk, hunched over a memo. Behind him, a window overlooked the yard, gave a clear view of the sniper tower where Grant holed up forty hours a week for eighteen years. The office walls were covered with animal heads and hides: antelope, bear, cougar, wolverine. Jack Wilkins would have approved.

  The warden pushed aside his memo, stood to greet them. His left leg was set in a thigh-high plaster cast. A pair of crutches lay on the floor beside his desk.

  “Don’t get up on our account,” Bay said.

  “I should know better than to ride a mountain bike at my age. Detective Raney and Sheriff Bay, right? Please have a seat. What can I do for you?”

  He was larger and a little younger than Bay, with broad shoulders and hands that must have required custom-made gloves. Wire-rimmed bifocals hung from a lanyard around his neck. He had a
habit of putting them on and taking them off again. His double-breasted suit made it hard to tell if his bulk was natural or something he worked for. Raney pictured him quashing fights in the cafeteria, lecturing inmates through the bars of their cell. He had the kind of presence that commanded attention.

  “I think you know why we’re here, Warden,” Raney said.

  “You’ve come to ask about Oscar. I’m surprised nobody came sooner.”

  “We read the articles,” Raney said. “It sounds like you were more than his employer.”

  “Until recently, yes.”

  “How recently?”

  “Jonathan had been dead a few months. I was a pallbearer at his funeral.”

  “What changed between you?” Bay said.

  “I don’t really know. I guess he needed to leave this place behind. And me with it.”

  “He resigned?” Raney said.

  “Two years shy of a full pension.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “There’d been an incident in the yard. A man was stabbed to death by members of a rival gang. Oscar didn’t so much as fire a warning shot. When I asked him about it, he said whatever they had going on between them was none of his business. Then he handed me his weapon and left. Apart from a formal letter, I haven’t seen or heard from him since. Still, I find it damn hard to believe he—”

  “He did,” Raney said.

  “All right,” the warden said. “So keep asking your questions.”

  “There’s only one question that matters: Where do you think he is right now?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “You’ve known the man for eighteen years. You saw him every day. You were friends. You came to his defense when you didn’t have to.”

  “So?”

  “I’m sure you have an idea or two worth sharing.”

  The warden leaned forward.

  “I understand you’re doing your job,” he said. “How well you’re doing it is another question. If I knew Oscar was plotting mass homicide, don’t you think I would have stopped him?”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Since I had no idea what he was doing, how can I predict where he might be?”

  “Give us your best guess.”

  “My best guess? He killed himself. Someplace where the animals would find him before the marshals. He did what he felt he had to do. I doubt he wanted to outlive his son by one more day.”

  “Why do you think he did it?” Raney asked.

  “People will have to act now. He made his son a martyr. Himself, too.”

  “Okay, but why Oscar? The drug trade mass-produces bereft parents.”

  The warden pushed back in his chair, wiped his glasses with a handkerchief.

  “I doubt what he saw in Panama helped him any,” he said, “but a man who joins an elite branch of the military and then makes his living as a sniper is a man who likes to kill, and all that stands between him and killing is a cause. If he can find the right cause, then he isn’t a killer, he’s a vehicle. That’s what the military gives a man like Grant. Jonathan became his ultimate cause.”

  “You make him sound pathological,” Raney said. “But you were friends. You had him around your children.”

  “Oscar had other qualities. Qualities most people lack. Loyalty. Bravery. A work ethic. And I believed in his ability to keep himself in check. Jonathan’s death was the tipping point. It would have been for anyone. This is just how it played out for Oscar.”

  “And for the people who died yesterday,” Raney said.

  “Yes,” the warden said. “I’m aware.”

  Raney stood, set his card on the desk. Bay stood with him.

  “It goes without saying that if Oscar—”

  “Of course.”

  “I hope that leg heals quick,” Bay said.

  “It’s too late for that,” the warden said. “I just hope it heals.”

  Raney took a sweeping look at the mounted wildlife.

  “Impressive,” he said. “Who was the better shot, you or Oscar?”

  The warden looked out at the sniper tower.

  “No one was a better shot than Oscar.”

  They sat in the squad car, Bay smoking, Raney staring at nothing in particular.

  “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “Him telling us Oscar is dead. The stuffed animals. The cast on his leg.”

  “I caught a whiff of it, too,” Bay said. “Something staged.”

  “Plausible deniability. ‘I hadn’t been up there. My leg was broken. I didn’t know.’”

  “Hadn’t been up where?”

  “The man’s poured a small fortune into taxidermy. I’m guessing he has a cabin in the woods someplace. A weekend getaway.”

  “Where Grant and his son did their hunting?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you think Grant’s there now?”

  “I think there’s a good chance.”

  “If the place exists.”

  “Should be easy enough to check,” Raney said. “Property’s a matter of public record.”

  “Let’s pay the bureau a visit.”

  Bay started the car.

  “If he does have a place,” Raney said, “I doubt it’s far from where Grant burned that truck.”

  New Jersey, July 1984

  39

  Raney inched out onto the street, dug through Meno’s pockets until he recovered his shield. The words and emblems were filled in with blood. He peeled off a latex glove, slipped the badge inside.

  He drove Dunham’s car back to the club, stopping to dump his spattered shirt and shoes in a sewer on the Jersey side of the bridge. On Staten Island, he parked and walked barefoot through the back alley, let himself in the basement delivery door. He felt his way through the dark. At the foot of the kitchen steps, he heard Pierre shouting orders to his assistant, heard the young Lena Horne belting out a chorus of “Alone Together.”

  There was an industrial sink on the wall opposite the walk-in freezer. Raney scrubbed his hands with Ajax, washed his face and hair with bar soap, then emptied his pockets. He left his jeans and T-shirt soaking in bleach.

  Dunham kept spare clothes and a cot in a room that had once been the root cellar. The khakis were tight at the waist, long at the heel. The wing-tip shoes were two sizes too big. The only shirt was violet and spotted with small white circles.

  He couldn’t think of where to go or what to do next. He collapsed on the cot, shut his eyes, lay there feeling Dunham’s clothes turn damp with sweat. He jerked upright when the nausea hit, fought it back, felt his skin turn cold.

  Dunham kept his personal stash in a lockbox under the cot. Raney busted the lock open with a hammer, found the interior brimming with prescription painkillers, packets of coke, tabs of acid. He swallowed a Percocet dry, snorted a long line, then lay back down. He heard the young Lena scatting above him. Little by little, he felt his strength return, his system settle. He pocketed his gloved shield, took up the lockbox, and carried it with him.

  He drove his own car, tossed Dunham’s keys into a vacant lot.

  The live-in super was smoking weed. The odor rose through a basement vent, filled the street outside Sophia’s building. All but a few of the windows were dark. Raney let himself into the lobby, swallowed another Percocet on the stairs. He rang Sophia’s bell and waited. He stepped clear of the peephole, rang again. A succession of bolts clicked free. The door opened as far as the chain would allow.

  “I suppose if I don’t let you in, you’ll make a scene,” Sophia said.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Raney said.

  “It’s one in the morning, Wes. This is already a scene.”

  “I want to come home.”

  She seemed more tired than sad, her skin flushed, her eyes adjusting to the light.

  “We can talk,” she said. “But I’m not sure this is your home anymore.”

  She slid the chain from its plate, left the do
or ajar. Raney followed her into the living room. She sat on the love seat, legs crossed, terry-cloth robe wrapped tight around her chest. Raney sat leaning against one arm of the couch.

  “Look at you, Wes,” she said. “You’re dressed like a clown. Your eyes are bloodshot. Your pupils are so dilated I can barely see them. You’re sweating, and it’s sixty degrees in here.”

  “I need help,” he said. “I didn’t see it before, but now I do.”

  “And I want to help you,” she said. “But you’ve become too big a job for me. For any one person.”

  He looked at her, saw love and concern but no fear, no anger. She’d prepared herself, plotted a course of action. He volunteered.

  “I’ll check myself in,” he said. “I’ll go right now if you want.”

  “It’s a little late,” she said.

  “In the morning, then.”

  “You can’t just say that because I want to hear it.”

  “I’m not.”

  “It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, Wes.”

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t want this to be me. I never thought it could be.”

  She moved beside him on the couch, set a hand across the back of his neck, kissed his temple. It was what he thought he’d come here for—affection, comfort—but he felt himself recoiling, shrinking inward, not for his sake but for hers, as though his skin made her touch grotesque.

  “I know people,” she said. “People I went to school with. We’ll find you the right facility. We’ll get through this. We’re going to be fine. I promise.”

  They sat for a while, her head on his shoulder, before she took his hand and led him into the bedroom. Raney followed, thinking he would let her believe for one more night. When she woke, he’d be gone. He’d walk into Lieutenant Hutchinson’s office, hand over his badge and gun, confess to every detail. He’d refuse bail, refuse all visitors. People would know where to find him, but he’d be beyond their reach, like a ghost or a dead man. The idea gave him some relief.

  Sophia sat him on the edge of the bed and undressed him, pulling off Dunham’s shoes, peeling back his socks. When she was done, Raney rolled onto his side, already asleep. Sophia’s voice brought him back.

  “Jesus Christ, Wes,” she said. “What the fuck is this?”