Spectre Black

by J. Carson Black

  Containment.

  There was a separate entrance for arrestees, and in this smallish cinder block building that entrance was in the back, as it usually was. Davis marched him up a loading ramp and into a gray hallway with gray linoleum and gray-painted walls. The only brightness was the row of fluorescent light panels at intervals along the ceiling, which seemed to chase the shadows into what few corners there were. The artificial light made it brighter than day, like those warehouse shopping marts, only worse in every respect. He could smell disinfectant that did little to mask the odor of piss and vomit.

  He knew his first stop would be Intake. It would be a long, drawn-out process, designed to humiliate and cow him.

  The first precept for cops was control. Clamp down on the perpetrator so he can’t make a move. Intimidate him into not even thinking about resistance. Always, the goal was to cut off rebellion at the source. Police were trained to run to meet trouble, to stop it before it could get any traction at all. Police work was based on the concepts of prevention and containment. Never let the tossed match turn into a brushfire.

  Landry understood this and even admired it, but he had been on the wrong end of this policy before, and he didn’t like it.

  He didn’t like it now.

  The undersheriff called to one of the guards. “Don’t bother with the other stuff, just give him the once-over and get him in lockup. I’ve got twenty-four hours.”

  There was one other man to be processed before him, so he waited. As he waited, his mind ran through the possibilities. The number-one possibility: his car, a white subcompact car, had been seen going through the checkpoint shortly before one of the militia members was shot to death.

  Landry knew that the guy who stopped him at the checkpoint did not write down his driver’s license number or even jot down the license plate of the car. The other two people at the checkpoint had been engrossed in conversation. Landry was sure the big guy who stopped him had not looked inside the duffle.

  Pretty sure.

  And if he had, what were the odds of him talking about it? He’d remarked on the box of tennis balls on the seat and the racket in the trunk—that was all. But maybe Landry’s memory was faulty and the man had unzipped the bag and looked inside.

  No, his memory wasn’t faulty. The guy did not look inside the duffle. One, he didn’t have time to, and two, Landry would have heard the duffle zipper open.

  Even if he had looked through the duffle, he had been killed shortly after Landry went through. He might have remarked to the other two about something he saw in the duffle, but again, Landry was sure he didn’t open it.

  Another car, another white subcompact, could have come by within the hour, and that car could have contained the shooter. The two other militia members struck Landry as not too bright. He doubted they had seen that kind of carnage before. A man being blasted by a shotgun—a man they knew. A man they spent time with.

  They would have been in shock.

  So were the police interested in his car? After all, it was a white subcompact.

  But no one knew Landry in this town. No one could have looked at the white Nissan Versa and known he had rented it. He had used a different identity to check in to the motel.

  The only person he had spent any time with in this town was Agent Carla Vitelli. Perhaps she suspected him and somehow found a way to link him to the car?

  It was hard to think in here. There were a number of mentally ill people around him. All of them claiming to be innocent. Some of them screaming, some of them crying, one of them vomiting, some of them just sitting there staring into space. A few talked casually to one another, as if they were in bleachers at a ball game. Landry sat quietly and nobody talked to him. To his right was a homeless man who hugged himself and sang under his breath. To his left was a big hulk of a man, Hispanic, with the concentrated visage of a sumo wrestler. Except he wasn’t naked, fortunately for everyone there. He wore a tank top and those long, sloppy shorts that only looked good on basketball players, and blinding white top-of-the-line running shoes.

  The homeless man smelled. The hulk smelled good. But both smells were overwhelming. Between the two of them Landry could survive only by breathing through his mouth.

  Chains rattled. Someone snored. He could smell cigarette smoke clinging to a lot of unwashed bodies. Time dragged by. A fly lit on the homeless guy and he freaked, and someone dragged him away. The Hispanic guy did not seem to notice. He just sat there, elbows on his knees, fists cuffed together, staring straight ahead.

  There were madhouse cries every once in a while, and shuffling feet, and chains.

  Finally Landry was walked over to the intake desk. There was plenty of shame to go around, and a police jail was the perfect place to showcase it. The man at the desk looked at his ID and driver’s license: “Chris Keeley.” He went through the contents of his wallet and confiscated money. He paid particular attention to Chris Keeley’s one credit card. Landry wondered if this small-city police force in New Mexico pulled the scam that many others did. If they would trump up a charge and confiscate his assets.

  Good luck with that. Chris Keeley had the credit card but nothing in a bank account except enough to keep the savings account open. One hundred dollars, in a bank that nobody had ever heard of.

  The man processing him had a placid expression. He must have seen every possible permutation of man, and gave off the impression that nothing fazed him. He had an indoor pallor that went with the artificial light.

  Next up, Landry thought: fingerprints. Only the man didn’t take fingerprints. He didn’t take a mug shot, either.

  Good thing.

  Or maybe a bad thing. If there was no record of him, they could do anything.

  I’ve got twenty-four hours.

  The undersheriff had treated him as a special case.

  This arrest was off the books.

  As far as they were concerned, he must appear to be who he said he was. Chris Keeley, no wants, no warrants. A high school teacher from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His wallet showed pictures of his wife and kids. He had a driver’s license, a Triple A card, and one credit card.

  He was not questioned.

  Landry asked the officer leading him to lockup what the charges were.

  “Vagrancy.”

  “I’m staying at The Satellite INN motel.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “If I’m staying at a motel, that’s not vagrancy.”

  “You’ll have your day in court.”

  No use arguing with him. They sent him through the showers and gave him a yellow jumpsuit and a pair of flip-flops that were two sizes too small and slippery when wet.

  He was locked in what looked like a cage you put dogs in, only twenty times bigger. It appeared to be temporary, like a cage set on the floor, until they made up his suite. His box was on one side of the room and there were four other cages opposite his. There were only three other inmates, so they had the place to themselves.

  One of the inmates wailed like a banshee. It was constant. Landry was mildly successful at blocking out the sound.

  There was no theater seating, so he found a place that wasn’t taken and sat down, knees up, feet flat on the concrete floor, back against the wall. He was forty-eight years old now, pushing fifty, and his years as a SEAL had compromised parts of his body in many ways—wear and tear. Despite a daily routine of flexibility training, he knew that in normal circumstances, his body would act up.

  Fortunately, that didn’t apply to emergency situations, and did not impinge too much on his particular skill set. The learned memory was still there. He could still kill a man in a few seconds if he needed to.

  Time to cool his heels and wait to see what would happen.

  A half hour in, a jailer came for him. He was marched down another gray hallway and buzzed through two solid steel doors, deeper int
o the building, and deposited into a cell of his own. This cell had a bunk, a toilet, and a sink. Landry doubted that the faucets were Moen.

  The door slid open and closed electronically. All the cells surrounded a common area.

  The common area had chairs and a couple of tables. A little like those breakfast nooks at the Comfort Inn, except these were gray, metal, beaten up, and cheaper. Landry could see that the chairs and tables were bolted to the floor. A guard stood on duty. Two inmates sat at one table, watching a soap opera on TV.

  He was surprised there were still soap operas on TV. He guessed there weren’t many channels on the TV in the common area. Landry lay down on the bunk and stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out what the game was. He was aware that he had been moved in the wrong direction, deeper into the jail. He’d require a bed, a sink, and a toilet. Which meant they would be keeping him for a while.

  No one came to talk to him. No one came with forms to fill out; no cops came to question him. They were a conspicuously incurious lot. It was just him and the squirrel cage and the sound of the soap opera on TV. He thought of other things while he waited. He had waited for longer periods in worse places than this—in the desert heat, over 120 degrees—many times. If anyone was made for waiting, Landry was.

  The day passed, but as he suspected, no one came to release him. The little block of sunshine from the narrow window high above moved along the floor. There was one guy across the way who cackled like a crow. One guy who had a screaming fit was moved somewhere else. There was a smell, too. Old clothes, old socks, body odor. Aftershave.

  He thought about aftershave, and how he’d smelled it on his walk back through the darkening day, but saw no one. Had he been imagining things?

  Night came and went. The TV droned on. By then he’d reconnoitered, but found nothing remotely interesting. There were only a few channels on the TV, and they were mostly the kind of crap you get with basic cable: infomercials and talk shows. Plenty of magazines. Dog-eared copies of Popular Mechanics, a Time magazine from two years ago, and a Holy Bible.

  Landry could sleep anywhere, so he lay down on the bunk, closed his eyes, and drifted off.

  The next day, the sun poked through the window again.

  The electronic gate shuttled sideways and a guard brought him a tray with some inedible food on it. It looked like a sausage patty and egg, but just barely. He didn’t know if it was the fluorescent lights overhead or the meat, but it had a greenish tinge.

  But there was coffee.

  He was grateful for the coffee.

  The guard was a big guy, possibly a high school football star a few years before. He had that corn-fed Nation’s Breadbasket look—a crew cut and wide blue eyes. He could have been a farm boy from the 1950s.

  As Landry accepted the tray, the guy leaned in to him. Broad face, plenty of muscle in his arms and chest. He whispered, “I don’t know what your game is, but stay away from her. Got that?”

  “Stay away from whom?”

  “You know who. My fiancée.”

  “You know whom.”

  “What?”

  “You know whom. Not who. Who’s your fiancée, so I’ll know to stay away from her?”

  “You know whom it is, but I’ll spell it out for you. Carla.”

  Landry ignored the kid’s mangled grammar, and decided to play dumb. “Carla who?”

  The kid’s face turned murderous. “Carla, the lady you’ve been harassing.”

  “I haven’t harassed anyone, that I know of.”

  “Think again.”

  “Are we going to play twenty questions?”

  “You know whom,” the kid said again. “Carla Vitelli. She’s with the FBI, so you’d better leave her alone.”

  Landry looked at the kid. Maybe he was connected in this town. Maybe his father was a big deal. Or his mother was a big deal—Landry didn’t want to be sexist about it. “The FBI agent? She’s your fiancée?”

  “That’s right. So don’t go sniffing around, okay?”

  “Okay.” Landry wondered how much the boy knew. He must be in his early twenties, although he looked eighteen. Did he know about the marathon at The Satellite INN?

  No. If he did, he might have got to Landry in his sleep—and Landry might never have awakened to find out about it. The kid looked like he had a short fuse, and Landry suspected he had the potential to kill. He knew that much about him.

  Corn-fed tried to stare a hole in him. His eyes were the color of faded blue denim. He could have been just a kid, but he would be the kind who would cross the line without very much thought at all.

  Landry wondered why he hadn’t been assaulted. Perhaps the kid was just a jailer, and had no power, despite being affianced to an FBI agent.

  Or maybe the kid was waiting for a better chance.

  But it wasn’t the kid who moved him to the deeper recesses of the county jail. This guard was male, plump, and feminine, built like one of those punch clowns, the kind you’d hit in the face and they would come bobbing back at you. All his weight was below his waist. This time Landry’s hands were cuffed, the manacles threaded through a waist chain that went well with the leg chains. They shuffled him through many corridors that grew successively darker, until he reached dungeon status—this must be where they kept the hard cases.

  There were several cells lining the walls, but only one was occupied.

  “Why am I here?” Landry asked the punch-clown guard.

  Unsurprisingly, the guard’s voice was on the high side. “You’ll see,” he said.

  He sounded nervous. He looked nervous, too, glancing around often and then averting his eyes from the cells on either side.

  “Is this some kind of punishment?” Landry asked.

  The guard hit the button and the door to the occupied cell slid open partway. Inside was one big guy. He must have been six-four, six-five.

  The guard brandished his stick. “You stay back now, Earl!”

  Landry took Earl in at one glance. Shaved head, tats all over, including a rather fetching banner across his forehead that spelled SATIN. Landry almost made a remark, something to the effect that he should ask the tattoo artist for his money back, but he didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot. His new cellmate grinned. He had meth teeth; the bottom row looked like a half-eaten cob of corn.

  The Incredible Tattooed Man. He had the full sleeves and art climbing up his neck like a thick vine. Landry was betting full-body suit, and wondered if he’d get the opportunity to see for himself. (Not that he wanted to.) Earl had jailhouse muscles, which in Landry’s opinion were about as useless as no muscles at all.

  Besides, it wasn’t about muscles. It was about leverage.

  Landry was betting, though, the guy had something else to back it up—something sharp. In addition, he probably had a pretty slim grip on reality.

  “Why am I here?” Landry asked again.

  “This is just temporary,” the guard said. “Overcrowding.”

  Landry remembered most of the cells around him in the last pod had been empty.

  Landry’s new cellmate started toward them. It made him think of wolves coming after the weakest lamb. The guard brandished his club and yelled, “Stay back, Earl! You know what happened last time.”

  Earl seemed to sink back, like an animal putting weight on its haunches, ready to spring. He made a noise somewhere deep down in his throat. All of it was way over the top, and Landry wondered if perhaps this was some kind of a joke.

  The guard removed the extraneous hardware. Landry stood quietly while he did so. He ignored Earl.

  Earl continued to make the sound in his throat. Half growl, half whine.

  The guard backed out hastily, hit the switch, and the gate rattled shut. “Play nice,” he said, before walking away, leaving the two of them alone.

  Landry went to the bunk th
at had been made up and sat down, facing Earl. “Hello, Earl. I’m Cyril. This is how it’s going to be. I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone. How’s that?”

  Earl just stared at him with his shiny, bat-shit-crazy eyes. He literally was a mouth-breather.

  “Let me rephrase this, Earl. We can do this the hard way or the easy way. Let’s make it the easy way, okay? I leave you alone, and you leave me alone.”

  Landry gave him a look that would be as strong as a handshake. A look that said, “We have a deal.”

  Then he lay back on the bunk and waited.

  Earl behaved himself for the most part. He lay on his bunk and hummed tunelessly—Landry thought he recognized some of the songs, most of them from the seventies. The time when disco was king.

  But Landry also knew that at some point Earl would stop humming disco and come for him.

  It was a kind of stalemate. Landry lay on the bunk, arms cradling the back of his head on the flat and spongy pillow they’d provided. The pillow and the sheets smelled bad. Maybe it was mold; maybe it was something deeper, like desperation. Earl didn’t help. He was the kind of guy who sweated a lot. The stink clung to him, and more than once Landry had to turn away and breathe through his mouth. It was a metallic stink, a vaccination stink. With just a hint of brimstone.

  The hours went by. All of it seemed pointless. Landry didn’t know why he was being held, but he assumed it was because somebody wanted him held.

  He also assumed somebody wanted him dead. If that was true, Earl was the guy for it. Earl was perfect for it.

  Landry listened. All of him was on guard. It was like being back in Afghanistan—every sense heightened. He knew it was coming. He knew this was a setup, and as strong as he was, he needed to be ready. Earl might be a meth head, but he’d probably been offered a nice reward to maim or kill Landry. That would make him extremely goal-oriented.

  Landry got all this just from the way Earl looked at him. As if Landry was a big Thanksgiving turkey on a platter with all the fixings.