Spectre Black

by J. Carson Black

  Another photo featured one of the traffic cones that had blocked the road. An artistic shot: the aftermath of a shooting, the cone lying on its side. The photog must have thought it conveyed a higher truth. The cone represented the victim.

  Beyond the cone was just the very edge of what looked like a combat boot toe sticking straight up, the rest mercifully covered by a tarp.

  He wondered which man had been killed. Was it the one in the ball cap who had asked to see his ID, or was it the man who had been standing with the squat woman? Landry thought it didn’t much matter—he certainly didn’t know any of them—but he was curious.

  The accompanying article was long on photos and short on information. At approximately eleven in the morning a man in a white subcompact car had tried to run down the person manning the checkpoint. The victim was not identified—“Name withheld pending notification of the family”—but the article did say he had been shot twice: once in the chest and once in the face. After taking several shots at the fleeing car, the two surviving members of the checkpoint patrol had tried to resuscitate their friend. But Landry guessed he’d died instantly.

  Luckier than most.

  He looked out the window at the parking lot, which was jammed with cars. He counted four white subcompacts, including his own rental. Good protective coloration as far as it went, but he wondered if he was now a suspect. He had driven up to that checkpoint in the midmorning. Somewhere between ten thirty and eleven a.m.—eleven fifteen at the latest.

  Fortunately, there were witnesses. The squat woman and her string-bean friend. Neither one of them looked very bright but they might remember the man who shot their pal.

  Except that Landry knew witnesses were notoriously unreliable. When he’d driven up, they had been leaning against one of the Suburbans, arms folded, chatting. They might have spared him a glance, but maybe they didn’t. Maybe they didn’t really see him at all. What they would have seen was their buddy leaning down talking through the driver’s window of a white subcompact car. They might have been able to see the driver through the windshield but the sunlight was bright and harsh. And they’d probably operated under the tacit agreement, You take this one, and I’ll take the next.

  He had the distinct impression that the squat woman and the beanpole boy had been enjoying their day playing soldier.

  Landry was amazed that either one of them had been able to offer any description at all, other than the word “white” and subcompact. Pretty good, although he suspected that someone else had come up with the term “subcompact.” They probably said something like “small car.” None of the three would qualify as bright bulbs. They had made up their own little checkpoint with their own little made-up police force, mainly because no one told them they couldn’t. The federal and local governments wouldn’t want to get into a firefight with them, or even arrest them, since it would be bad publicity or, worse, a showdown that could result in injuries, deaths, and lawsuits. He’d seen it before: a hands-off policy that was really a wish-it-would-go-away policy. In his opinion, this policy led to a lot of swaggering assholes stopping people and checking their IDs. And eventually that would lead to tragedy . . .

  Which it had.

  Landry himself had complied because he had better things to do than teach them a lesson.

  Apparently, someone else wasn’t so easygoing.

  He checked into The Satellite INN and asked for a second-floor room facing the street, which also happened to be Branch’s main drag.

  His room was like any other motel room at this price point: it contained a swaybacked queen-size bed covered by a rust-and-brown floral bedspread, a TV in brackets in the corner, and a waist-high counter fronting a mirror so he could see the wall art above the bed in its reflection. The art in question was a mustard-colored print of a button-eyed female puppet—vaguely Hopi. Thick swabs of paint and the lack of a nose or mouth told him it was a DeGrazia print.

  Landry walked out onto the second-story walkway and leaned on the rail, looking down at the kidney-shaped pool. Families had taken it over, their voices rising along with a splashing beach ball.

  Like the other old motels on the street, The Satellite INN came from the Space Age. In New Mexico, motels with space-race themes sprang up like mushrooms in the late fifties and early sixties, partially to reflect the optimism of the era but also betraying the sharp edge of fear underneath. Developers wanted to make all of it fun—and accessible. Thus the atom symbols and movies about space aliens, who always seemed to invade places where few people would feel threatened because they didn’t live there.

  Deserts like this one.

  Landry walked to the end of the building. From here he could see the parking lot the motel and the diner shared. Two of the other white cars had gone—so much for protective coloration from police looking for a white subcompact.

  He had a few options. He could ditch the car or hide it—or he could leave it where it was.

  How many white subcompact cars were there in this town? He’d noticed several just on his drive into town—at least nine or ten, maybe more. And that didn’t take into account the outlying houses in their minisuburbs. Small but sporty utilitarian cars were making a comeback. It stood to reason that people who wanted new cars in a town of this size and tax base would go small—something affordable but modern. Doable. In San Clemente and LA, Landry was used to seeing BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, and the odd Maserati. No one would drive a Maserati out here. They’d be more likely to drive a Dodge Ram.

  And if they couldn’t afford a Dodge Ram, they’d buy a Nissan Versa, or something like it.

  He heard a “whump!” and the beach ball sailed up and over the railing. Landry picked it up and punched it back down. One of the grownups yelled “Thanks!”

  He calculated the odds of being pulled over because he was driving a small white compact.

  He looked down at the car, parked facing him, the silver sunshade propped up in the window. A car in a parking lot was less likely to attract the eye of a law enforcement officer than a moving vehicle. Even if he was pulled over—which would have to be under extraordinary circumstances—what then? He had a rock-solid alias. He’d used a legitimate credit card at the Budget in Las Cruces. He looked like your average citizen, just making a run to the store to buy refreshments for the wife and kids.

  Would there be a store-to-store, house-to-house search?

  No. The law enforcement agencies would assume that whoever got into the gunfight with the militia would keep on going, right through Branch and on to whatever place they could find to lie low. They might ditch the car and steal another. They might keep driving until they could get lost in a good-sized city, like El Paso.

  What Landry couldn’t figure out was how he’d missed the other car. It must have shown up right after he went through the checkpoint. He didn’t remember seeing any car behind him in the rearview mirror. Some cars had flashed by the Circle K, and only a couple had been white. But nothing about them stood out.

  Maybe the shooters turned off somewhere and took a different route.

  The important thing was to get back out to the Circle K and wait for Jolie.

  But first, he went for a walk.

  Chapter 5

  Three blocks down on the main drag Landry found a used car lot, one of those places where they try to rope you in with easy-money payments for the rest of your life.

  At the front of the lot was a 1997 blue Aerostar panel van that had been driven up onto a platform facing the street. Painted on the window was a white cloud with red lining, and inside the cloud in bold blue letters it said “$1999!!!!!”

  Landry inquired within.

  He had changed his look again. He’d shaved his facial hair, for one thing. At the Walgreens two doors down from The Satellite INN, he’d bought a couple of plain T-shirts and cheap aviator shades. Back in his room, he’d stretched the tees out so the materia
l looked tired, and added cotton balls to the back of his mouth to make his face look wider. He’d also wadded up a shirt and stuck it in the waistline of his old jeans to give himself a small belly. Old work boots completed the picture. As Landry walked out through the parking lot to the street, he’d dropped a piece of paper. As he’d bent down to pick it up, he also scooped up a little dirt and black from the asphalt, which he used to grime up the shirt a bit.

  A salesman crossed the lot toward him. They could have been twins, except the guy wore a short-sleeved button-down shirt and slacks of some cheap shiny material. He looked wilted from the heat, and vaguely desperate. “How do you like her?” he said, patting the fender of the van as if it were a horse.

  “Can you come down on the price?” Landry asked.

  “Oh, I can’t do that, friend, I’m sorry. It’s a ridiculous price as it is.”

  “Can’t haggle a little?”

  “I’m afraid not. You want to test drive it? This baby is solid, and if you’re in a job where you need to carry equipment, this is a real workhorse.”

  Landry reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. Flashed the roll. “I have fifteen hundred. All I’m gonna spend.”

  The guy grinned. A good trick to look amused with sweat trickling down your face. “It’s nineteen-ninety-nine! A great bargain.”

  “I can pay you cash right now. Fifteen hundred.”

  The salesman drew in a breath. “Got yourself a deal, mister.”

  After the paperwork was done, Landry said, “Is there a Walmart nearby?”

  “Oh, yeah, we’ve got a brand-new one. Right up Powder Road, at the intersection with Garcia. Four blocks and over the new overpass.”

  The Walmart was the anchor store, but to Landry’s delight, there was also a Sportsman’s Warehouse. He bought two of the least expensive hunt cameras he could find, and a blue work shirt.

  He needed to change the look of the van, give himself a reason for being here. He bought a can of black poster paint and stenciled “Diaz Landscaping Service” in small block letters on both sides. The takeaway: a landscaper no one would want, slapdash and amateurish.

  Just beyond the Walmart the land stretched out, mostly open space except for a few ranch houses sprinkled here and there. And several acres of staked vines. Yet another crop in New Mexico: wine.

  Back at the abandoned Circle K he parked again under the tamarisk tree and waited. He had a box of donuts and a to-go cup of coffee from a Dunkin’ Donuts. He put the box on the seat and kept the door open, sitting in the driver’s seat, just a Diaz Landscaping employee taking a break in the shade before driving on to the next job.

  Few cars went by. No one spared him a glance. The shade from the tamarisk tree was dark as ink.

  Periodically, he rang the phone at the Circle K.

  Nothing happened.

  There was very little traffic. He stayed there for three hours. By that time he knew Jolie Burke was not coming.

  It was hot here in full summer. The desert could sneak up on you. Landry had seen that many, many times in Iraq and in Afghanistan. One minute you were fine, and then suddenly, you were overwhelmed. Sunstroke happened to hikers all the time. Not just hikers, either, but strollers. People out for a walk on a nice morning. He’d read about a hiker who had recently succumbed in a tame desert park in Tucson, Arizona. The woman in question was in her twenties and an avid hiker, and this was just a couple-hour hike on a designated path in a relatively tame county park in June. She did everything right. It was early in the morning. She’d had friends with her. She had water. She had trail mix. She had a phone. Probably had all the up-to-date hiker attire and equipment as well. But for whatever reason, she went into cardiac arrest and they could not revive her.

  If Jolie was out in this desert, she had been here for at least sixty hours. Some of that was night, but a lot of it was day.

  He scanned his surroundings. The land was mostly beige in color, depending on the time of day. There was a striation of pale green where mesquite trees followed the trickle of white sand that called itself a watercourse. All of them dry at this time of year. Dips and washes and small promontories of rock, primarily igneous and metamorphic. But to the naked eye it was a uniform tan, all the way to the washed-out blue mountains.

  The sound of a ringing phone would go a long way out here. But it had not drawn her in.

  Jolie Burke was gone. His guess? Someone had her, and was preventing her from leaving. He’d heard the desperation in her voice, the edge of fear. Jolie Burke was good at masking her emotions. She was good at keeping her own counsel. And yet he remembered hearing it in her voice. As if she were hanging by one fingertip on a high-tension wire.

  She might have escaped whoever it was who had been holding her, but maybe they had found her. She could be anywhere by now. She could be in Branch, or she could have been taken out of state. Or—he glanced in the direction of Mexico—out of the country.

  Or she could be dead.

  It turned on a dime: just like that. One minute he was waiting. Scanning the horizon, hoping for her to come. And the next he knew she was never coming.

  It was time for Plan B.

  Whatever Plan B was.

  Chapter 6

  Jolie Burke lived in a rented house on Turner Avenue, an old part of town. Turner Avenue was a generic name for a street where the houses were jostled together cheek by jowl, many of them with small but cluttered yards. Toys, old cars on blocks, dogs of unusual ancestry, and old walnut trees pushing up the sidewalk. Most of the houses were plain-wrap Victorian, which meant they had wood siding and porches with spindly posts. The spindly posts outside Jolie’s place were painted dark green. Landry noted the home protection sign planted in the grass. He also noticed that her yard was neat and the plants and tree were healthy.

  There was an empty lot on one corner and a convenience store on the other.

  Landry made one pass by. Hardly anyone was out on the street. None of the dogs were barkers. They either sat morosely in the shade or trotted up to the fence to get a look at the man driving by. It was a weekday and many of the driveways were empty—people at work. Only one middle-aged woman, dressed like a hippie from the sixties, black hair down to her waist, was spraying her flowerbed with water. She was careful not to look in his direction as he drove past in his Diaz Landscaping Service van. He could have been on the moon for all she cared.

  There was an alley behind the row of houses, choked with weeds, smelling of garbage and the sharp, medicinal stench of alcohol. Landry had counted the houses—Jolie lived four down from this end of the street. He cruised through the alley between the two rows of backyards facing the alley, parking as close to the back wall of Jolie’s yard as he could get.

  Nothing going on in the hot sunlight. Everyone either at work, or at school, or indoors under the air conditioners. Landry noted several swampbox coolers, could hear them rattling on the roofs.

  You could have staged a theater production here, and no one would notice.

  Landry parked up close to the wall behind Jolie’s place. In his blue work shirt, jeans, work boots and cap, he looked like a guy sent to clean up the backyard. He even had a rake and a plastic garbage can.

  This wall had been added to—it was much higher than the other walls on the alley. He tried the gate but it was locked.

  As he approached, he heard a bark. A suspicious sound, low and guttural.

  Of course she had a dog. She was a cop. Cops by nature were paranoid. Cops by nature were all about mitigation. Mitigation and control. Control your immediate space, keep things from getting out of hand. Smother trouble in its sleep. If at all possible, run to meet trouble and hit it before it could hit you. That was the reason her wall was higher—the new blocks creating a sort of waterline. Gray on the bottom, and coral on top. He had no doubt her house would be hard to get into. There was already a regula
r obstacle course. High wall, big dog, alarm service sign.

  He could jimmy the back door if he could get past the dog. But Landry doubted if Jolie would leave it just at that. Cops—at least cops like Jolie—tended to be anal when it came to personal protection.

  Landry looked around.

  Nothing going on. Just the heat, the sun bearing down on his head.

  He climbed up onto the wall.

  The dog was a Rottweiler. He was lying down in the shade of the house, by the sliding glass door out to the yard.

  The yard wasn’t dry and parched and half-dirt, as some Landry had seen as he drove past chain-link fences and old pickets. In the shade on the terrace was a paradise of potted plants and flowers, colorful blooms—pinks, whites, deep-rose-colored petunias, small cacti in pots, a veritable rain forest of ferns and exotic bushes and small fruit trees.

  Smelling of water.

  The terrace dark from a recent spraying.

  Her neighbor? A friend?

  A boyfriend?

  Or was she holed up there, hiding?

  The Rottie woofed once from his spot on the cool terrace.

  Hard to know if he was friend or enemy.

  There was water in his bowl.

  There was food in another bowl. Big bowls for a big dog. A full bag of Pedigree Large Breed dog food was propped up against the redbrick house.

  Someone was taking care of the dog—and the plant. Maybe it was Jolie, hiding inside the house or staying elsewhere and coming by to look after him, or maybe it was a neighbor, or maybe it was someone she worked with at Branch Sheriff’s Office.

  If he knew one thing, it was that nothing would likely happen here except at night, under the cover of darkness. If he stayed around here much longer, landscaping van or not, he would draw attention.