Tony Wolf/Tim Buckthorn - 02 - Broken Shield

by J. D. Rhoades

  “Whoops,” Dushane said.

  “Three cops jumped him as soon as he got the note out. Place was federally insured, so they called in the Bureau. It was pretty small stuff and there wasn’t really much investigating to do, so we were going to let the local yokels have it. But one of them overheard the guy muttering something in the back of the patrol car.” He paused, obviously for dramatic effect.

  “Well?” Dushane said.

  “Preston…that’s the guy’s name, Art Preston…was crying like a baby, snot running everywhere, and pretty incoherent, but the cop said he’s sure he heard him say ‘they’re gonna kill her.’“

  Buckthorn felt his heart rate pick up. “He say anything else?”

  Braswell glanced at him in the rearview, then turned slightly to look back at him over the seat. “Who did you say you were again?”

  “Just answer his question,” Dushane said.

  “Listen, Dushane,” Watson broke in.

  Wolf overrode him. “I’d like an answer to that myself.”

  Braswell gave Buckthorn a hard look, then deliberately turned to make it obvious he was answering Wolf and not the interloper. “No,” he said. “He clammed up. Then he lawyered up.”

  “That fast?” Wolf said.

  “Yeah. Within a couple hours, actually. Some guy I never heard of named Renfro. Supposed to be pretty high powered talent from Atlanta. Got there around midnight.”

  “This Preston guy doesn’t sound like any kind of pro,” Dushane said. “So how’d he rate a hitter like that?”

  “Especially since he hadn’t even called this Renfro,” Watson said. “Or anyone else for that matter.”

  “Someone knew Preston had been taken,” Dushane said.

  “And they found out quickly,” Wolf said. “Whoever’s behind this Renfro character has someone on the inside. Either of the local force or the Bureau.”

  “The Bureau?” Watson was offended. “That’s impossible.”

  “Not in my experience,” Wolf said.

  “Not in my office,” Watson said. “I can guarantee you that.”

  “I can’t be sure of that,” Wolf said.

  “You want to walk into town?” Watson snapped at him. “Because if you’re going to start right off…”

  Buckthorn had had enough. He’d felt the quickening excitement, the feeling that they were getting somewhere, and now these people were bickering and keeping him from that. It sounded like the kind of turf war he’d always despised, the kind he ruthlessly quashed back in his own office. “Can we keep our eyes on the goddamn ball here?” he snapped.

  Everyone fell silent for a second. Dushane was staring at him as if he’d suddenly grown horns. “There’s a kidnap victim, a young girl, still out there,” Buckthorn went on doggedly. “If she’s still alive, she’s probably scared to death. And the clock’s ticking. We need to keep going forward, not get sidetracked.”

  “Listen, whoever the hell you are…” Braswell started.

  “He’s right,” Watson said. “So put a sock in it for the moment, okay, Dave?” He ignored Braswell’s stunned look and glanced in the rearview at Wolf. “Agent Wolf,” he said, “I’m one hundred percent sure that if there’s a leak, it’s not in my office. I’ve worked with most of these people for years. Been to their homes. My kids played baseball and soccer with some of theirs. But if you think we need to firewall this, I’ll do what I can.”

  “I’ll take your word and put that on hold for the time being,” Wolf said. “But Lieutenant Buckthorn’s right. We need to get ahead of this thing. We have anything on this Renfro character? Any persons of your particular interest in his client roster?”

  “Already got a call in to Atlanta to check up on that,” Watson said.

  Wolf nodded. “We get any local connections with his clientele that look like heavies, we start there.”

  “That could take time that we don’t have,” Dushane said. “What about the wife?”

  “Preston’s wife?” Braswell said.

  “Yeah,” Dushane said. “She missing a daughter?”

  There was another brief silence. “Jesus,” Dushane said, “No one’s talked to the wife yet?”

  “We’re not even sure if he’s married,” Braswell said.

  “We only just got this information,” Watson added.

  “Like what, last night?” Dushane said. “Jesus.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. Whatever. What’s the wife’s name?” Still no answer. She gritted her teeth and pulled out her phone. “What are you doing?” Buckthorn said.

  “Seeing if the county puts their marriage license or divorce records on line,” she said.

  “Places do that?”

  “Some do. You’d be amazed at how much info some places put out there.” She tapped away. “But not Hamilton County. Shit. Okay.” She leaned over the front seat. “The locals still have him?”

  “Yeah,” Watson said. “Waiting for the paperwork to take him to the Federal lockup.”

  “Tell them to look in his wallet. Find the emergency contact numbers.”

  Braswell pulled out his own cell phone. “What if the guy’s divorced?”

  “Then we hope he’s one of those guys who never bothers to clean the old cards out of his wallet.” Braswell nodded and began punching in numbers. As he began speaking, Dushane leaned back and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she turned her head to look at Buckthorn. She grinned. “Thanks for the kick in the ass, cowboy. We needed that.” She reached down and gave his knee a quick squeeze. He felt the blood rush to his cheeks as she leaned forward again.

  Braswell was talking to someone. “Okay. Myra Preston. Gimme the address.” He had a small notebook out and was scribbling in it as he listened. “Great. Thanks.” He shut off the phone. “607 Grampian Way,” he said to Dushane.

  “Well?” she said impatiently. No one answered. She looked over at Wolf, who was smiling sardonically. “Oh,” she said, abashed. “Um. Yeah. Sorry, sir.”

  Wolf shook his head and chuckled. “Not a problem, L.D.,” he said. “I’d sooner walk into a threshing machine than get in your way when you’ve got the bit between your teeth. And now you’ve got Buckthorn to back you up, I might as well go home.”

  Dushane’s face turned bright red. “I didn’t mean…I mean…”

  He patted her on the shoulder like a fond uncle. “It’s okay, L.D.,” he said. “I like initiative. Next time, though, don’t charge till I sound the bugle, okay?” For once, she seemed speechless.

  Wolf turned to Watson. “Can we split up?” he said. “You take the lawyer, we go talk to the wife? We’ll need a car.”

  “We can do that,” Watson said. He sounded relieved.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  607 Grampian was an undistinguished brick ranch-style house, very much like every other house on every other tree-lined suburban street. The only thing that stood out were the two large, gleaming Harley motorcycles that sat in the driveway behind an older model Ford Explorer.

  “Well, there’s a sight to bring back bad memories,” Wolf murmured. He was behind the wheel of another Ford Taurus they’d borrowed from the local FBI office.

  “Yeah,” Buckthorn said. The big bikes raised their own set of evil associations for him. He reached down to where his sidearm still rode in its holster on his belt, as if to reassure himself it was still there. The feel of the grip under his fingertips calmed him somewhat.

  “Looks like Mrs. Preston has company,” Dushane said from the back seat.

  “Well,” Wolf said, “let’s go see what’s what.” He turned to Buckthorn. “I’m going to have to ask you to stay here for the moment, Lieutenant,” he said.

  His back stiffened. “What? Why?”

  “Don’t get your feathers in an uproar, cowboy,” Dushane said. “It’s just that Agent Wolf and I do this together all the time. We’ve got it down by now. We know each other’s moves. A third party in the mix might throw us off. And, if any shit starts, I know you’ll come running. And I like
having you at our backs.”

  “Thanks,” Buckthorn said. “I think.”

  “Don’t worry, Tim,” Wolf said. “When we find the girl, you’ll be in the mix. I promise.”

  Buckthorn took a deep breath, willed his heart to slow down. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I get it.”

  Wolf nodded. He and Dushane got out of the car and advanced on the door. Buckthorn could see the tension in their backs and shoulders. They knew as well as he did that something here was seriously off. It was a matter of the instinct they all shared. The day was beginning to heat up, promising a blistering afternoon. He opened the passenger side door a crack, to let some air in. And in case I have to come running, he thought.

  __________

  “You thinking what I’m thinking, L.D.?” Wolf said.

  “Yeah,” Dushane replied, “if what you’re thinking is that those two big shovelhead Harleys look as out of place in this neighborhood as a priest at a bar mitzvah.”

  “Cute.”

  “Thanks. I got a bunch of those.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  The door opened just as they reached it, before Wolf had a chance to knock. The man standing there was broad and squat, with a shaved head, small piggy eyes, and a pair of neck tattoos that looked like they’d been done in prison, probably by someone with serious vision problems.

  “Whatever it is,” he said in a low growl, “we ain’t buyin’.”

  Wolf had his badge case out. He showed it to the bald man. “I’m with the FBI,” he said. “Special Agent Tony Wolf. My partner’s Agent Dushane. We’d like to talk to Mrs. Preston.”

  “She ain’t home,” the man said.

  “Really,” Wolf said. He gestured at the Explorer. “That her car?”

  “Yeah,” the man said. “But she ain’t here.”

  “You know when she’ll be back?” Dushane asked.

  “She didn’t say,” the bald man said. He noticed Wolf looking over his shoulder into the house and closed the door slightly. “Leave a card. I’ll have her call.”

  “You mind if we ask who you are?” Wolf said.

  The man gave back a nasty grin that showed a mouthful of yellowed and crooked teeth. “I don’t mind you askin,’“ he said, “but I ain’t answering.”

  “And why not?” Dushane asked.

  “Because fuck off, that’s why not,” the man said. He slammed the door shut.

  “Well, that was rude,” Dushane said.

  “Totally,” Wolf said.

  “We should kick his ass.”

  “In a little bit, maybe. But there’s at least one more guy in there, and we don’t have enough to go busting in.”

  “I hate it when you get all bogged down in legalities. You know he’s lying, right? About Mrs. Preston being in there?”

  “Of course. I didn’t say we were leaving. Right now, let’s see if we can run the plates on those Harleys and get some idea who we’re dealing with here. We may also want to get the local agents back here for backup.”

  “Okay.” They turned to walk back to the car. “Boss,” Dushane said, “do you notice something?”

  “Other than Buckthorn being gone?”

  “That was what I was talking about, yes.”

  “Damn it,” Wolf said.

  “I told you bringing him was going to be a bad idea.”

  __________

  Buckthorn had started moving as soon as he saw the tattooed man answer the door. There was no use trying to sit still. The man was an apparition right out of the nightmares that still troubled Buckthorn’s sleep, a dead ringer for the bikers that had terrorized him and his town when the outlaw biker gang known as The Brotherhood had come to Pine Lake looking for Wolf two years ago. Everything about him was wrong, and Buckthorn needed to do something about it.

  He moved down the driveway, unnoticed by the man who was focusing all his attention on Wolf and Dushane. He slipped around the side of the house, down the length of a narrow side yard formed by a waist-high line of shrubbery hugging the side of the building on his left and a chain-link fence that marked the property line on his right. The side yard opened onto a back yard that ran the length of the house, but was only about twenty feet deep. A tall wooden fence shielded the back of the property from the house that undoubtedly backed up to it from the next street over. A sudden sound from inside the house made Buckthorn jump. He recognized the rattling of pots and pans. He rounded the side of the house carefully, walking as light-footed as he could manage.

  There was a small concrete patio at the rear of the house, furnished with a pair of rusty metal patio chairs and a matching glass topped table. There was a gas grill pushed up against the house. The table top was dull and cloudy with dirt and some kind of greenish mold. The gas grill was covered with spider webs. No one sat back here, at least not any more. A set of sliding glass doors led indoors from the patio. The curtains were drawn across them. As Buckthorn drew closer, he heard the sound of pots and pans rattling again, but this time, he heard something else, a low, rhythmic sobbing. The sound of a woman weeping.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Dushane whispered behind him. He whirled, drawing his pistol as he did. Dushane flinched backwards, one hand raised defensively, reaching inside her suit coat for her own weapon with the other.

  “Listen,” he hissed. She did, cocking her head slightly to hear better. Wolf sidled up next to her, walking as carefully as Buckthorn just had. “Hear that, boss?” Dushane whispered.

  Wolf listened. There was the sound of a male voice, pitched too low for them to hear, then a short, sharp cry of pain. The sobbing redoubled.

  “Sounds like probable cause to me, Agent Dushane,” Wolf said.

  “I agree, Agent Wolf. With exigent circumstances, even.”

  “Go back up. Cover the front. They may try to get out that way. And call Watson and Braswell. Tell them we’ve got a possible hostage situation.” Dushane looked like she was about ready to argue, but then nodded and slipped off down the side yard again, her weapon drawn.

  Buckthorn advanced on the door. “Hey,” Wolf said. Buckthorn ignored him. He reached for the handle of the door and applied gentle pressure. The door moved aside slightly. Buckthorn turned to Wolf. It’s not locked, he mouthed silently.

  I know, Wolf mouthed back.

  Slowly, so as not to make a sound, Buckthorn eased the sliding glass door open an inch, then another. The sound of voices inside grew louder.

  “Please,” a female voice, thick with tears. “Just leave me alone.”

  A male voice replied, a high tenor with a thick country accent. “Don’t worry, sugar,” the voice said, “Once the two of us get you broke in, you’re gonna love it. They always do. Me an’ Beano, we done this lots of times. An’ we got all day an’ night.”

  Buckthorn’s jaw tightened. He moved the curtain aside an inch with the barrel of his pistol and peered through the narrow opening.

  A high counter stood a few feet away across a strip of tile floor. A pair of tall chairs, like barstools with brass backs, faced away from him. On the other side of the counter was the kitchen. It was a cramped space. The appliances looked old, the laminate counter-tops worn and chipped.

  A woman was pressed back against the stove, crowded back by a man in faded jeans and a ragged t-shirt. The man was rail-thin, but with knotted muscle showing beneath his sleeves. His hair was cut in a mullet that hadn’t seen a barber’s shears in a while. The woman was in her late forties, still slender, with thick black hair. She had her hand on the man’s chest as if to push him away, but she wasn’t pushing hard, despite the fact that he had his left hand on her breast, squeezing none too gently. The gun in the man’s right hand explained why.

  Buckthorn turned back to Wolf. He pointed at his eyes. I see. He held up his index finger, then put the hand to his throat. One hostage. He placed a hand on his chest, palm open. Female. He held up the finger again, put the hand on his forearm, then brought it back to his face, moving it up and down his cheek as if
stroking an imaginary beard. One suspect. Male. He pointed at his pistol. Handgun.

  Wolf remembered that Buckthorn and his department had had hostage rescue and SWAT training. He nodded, held up a fist. Understood. He pointed at Buckthorn. You’re in the lead.

  Buckthorn pointed at his own chest, then to his right. He pointed at Wolf, then straight through the door. I go right, you go straight.

  Wolf nodded. Buckthorn looked back through the curtain. The man was pressed against the woman, his face buried in her neck. She was sobbing openly now. Buckthorn couldn’t see the gun or the man’s right hand. He weighed that for a moment. He really wanted to know where that gun was. Then the woman gave a low wail of pain and despair, followed by a gloating chuckle from the man. Buckthorn reacted without thinking, yanking the sliding glass door open so hard it rattled in its tracks. He charged though, gun held in front of him with both hands.

  “POLICE!” he shouted. “DON’T MOVE!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  They’d found a Home Depot and used Lofton’s credit card to purchase shovels, an axe, a chainsaw and a pair of crowbars. They’d also bought some light coveralls, hard hats and heavy boots. Now, toiling under the broiling sun, they looked like any other construction workers. Donovan was fuming. This was beneath him, and he hated Lofton for the slowness and ineptitude that made it necessary for him to have to join in and sweat like a common laborer.

  They’d located the space above where the girl had been. Lofton had moved much of the bigger debris away with the backhoe, but there was still a considerable pile of fractured lumber, drywall and brick. They dug where they could, stopped and moved brick where they had to, used the chainsaw to cut through where a pair of ceiling joists had fallen together in a rough “v”, their ends trapped under a larger pile of rubble off to one side, making it impossible to move.