Hellhound On My Trail

by J. D. Rhoades

  “What do those say?” he asked.

  “Molon Labe,” Alford said. She looked a little embarrassed. “It’s Greek.”

  “I figured,” Keller said. “What does it mean?”

  She put the car in park and turned to him. “You know the story about the three hundred Spartans, right? They made a couple of movies about it.”

  Keller vaguely remembered lying on Julianne’s couch with his head in her lap as she flipped through the channels. He recalled a movie with a bunch of men in leather diapers, capes, and swords, and a lot of shouting. She had paused to watch for a few minutes, making jokes about the costumes and the shouting before she went back to surfing. The memory of that night, when he’d felt totally like a normal person doing normal things, caused him to draw in a deep shuddering breath. “Yeah,” he said after he’d gained control of himself. “I didn’t see them.”

  “Me either. But the story’s pretty classic. The tiny Spartan force standing off the whole Persian army, holding the pass of Thermopylae against impossible odds…anyway, when the Persians pull up, their general rides out and yells to Leonidas, the Spartan king, ‘Greeks! Give up your weapons.’ Leonidas waves his spear at the Persians and yells back, ‘MOLON LABE.’ Come and take them.”

  “So,” Keller said, “it’s like that ‘you can take my gun from my cold dead hand’ thing.”

  The gate had begun to swing open, parting in the middle to let them through. It must have been triggered by someone in the house he could see several hundred yards away. “Yeah,” Alford said. “Is that a problem?”

  “No,” Keller said. “It’s just that when you yell out what a badass you are and put a sign about it over your door, I’ve found that there’s no shortage of people who’ll take you up on it.”

  Alford put the car in gear and started up the long gravel drive. The gates swung noiselessly shut behind them. Keller looked back over his shoulder. Through the iron bars, he saw a black SUV slow down, pause directly across the road from the gates, then speed up and drive away. He frowned.

  “What?” Alford said as she saw the expression on his face.

  “Someone’s checking the place out.”

  “We get that all the time,” Alford said. “But I’ll let Becca know. She can put extra people on.”

  “People?” Keller said. But by then they were up to the house.

  It was a low-roofed, single-story structure, sprawling out across a slight rise that gave it a commanding view of the emptiness all around. There seemed to be more windows than walls in the building, but the floor to ceiling glass panes were set back below the overhang of the flat roof so that they shielded the interior from the worst of the midday sun. The driveway split just before they reached the house, forming a circle around a gravel area with a bubbling fountain in the middle. A water feature in this desert, Keller thought, meant someone wanted to show off how much money they could spend. On the far side of the circle, the drive led under a porte cochere that covered a set of broad steps ascending gently to the heavy wooden double front doors.

  There was a woman waiting on the steps. She was tall, with curly light brown hair that spilled to her shoulders. Her face, with its high cheekbones and strong jaw, looked forbidding until she smiled at the sight of Alford behind the wheel. Alford stopped the car and got out. The two women embraced. “Welcome home, babe,” the tall woman murmured. She broke the embrace and turned to Keller. Only then did he recognize her as the woman from the Liberty Arms billboards. She stuck out her hand, looking Keller up and down in a way that let him know he was being sized up. “Mr. Keller,” she said in a warm contralto. “I’m Rebecca Leonard. Welcome to Liberty Hall.”

  He took the hand and shook it. She had a firm grip. “I want you to know, Mr. Keller,” she said, “that you’re safe here. We take our freedom and our rights very seriously, and we do what it takes to secure them.”

  “Thanks,” Keller said as he released the hand. He was getting a very strange vibe from this woman. It reminded him of someone; he couldn’t put his finger on exactly whom. At the time, however, he didn’t have much choice but to trust her. “I appreciate your taking me in. Especially on such short notice.”

  She smiled again, this one more formal than the one she’d graced Alford with. She gestured toward the house. “Marta will show you to your room.”

  As if responding to a hidden signal, the door opened and a short, severe-looking middle-aged Latina in a maid’s uniform stepped out. She smiled at Keller and gestured him inside. He reached in the back of the Mercedes and picked up his bag. The maid held out her hand, still smiling. “I’ve got it, thanks,” he said. The maid’s smile slipped a notch. “Please,” she said, with more insistence than entreaty. Keller handed the bag to her. “This way,” the maid said. She turned and walked inside, with Keller following.

  Inside, the decor was sparse, with chrome and black leather predominating. One of the few softening influences was the huge painting of a desert flower that hung in the hallway that the maid was leading him down. Keller stopped, impressed with the lush curves and vibrant colors of the painting. The maid noticed his hesitation and came walking back down the corridor toward him, hefting Keller’s bag in one hand as if it weighed nothing. “Georgia O’Keefe,” she said, with as much pride as if it had been hanging in her own home. “Very good painting. Very famous.”

  Keller just nodded. The maid gestured to him to come along and led him further down the hall.

  The bedroom she led him to had the same black leather and chrome decor. The bed looked large and luxurious. Right now it was as inviting as any bed he’d ever slept in. A wall of windows looked out upon the desert, but there were thick curtains that could be drawn across them. There was a strange quality to the view, a blue haze in the windows as if the house was somehow underwater. He walked over and rapped on the glass sharply. He turned to the maid. “Bulletproof?”

  She nodded. “Sí. You are safe here.”

  Maybe, Keller thought. But the place still made him uneasy. Marta opened a door. “Bathroom is in here, if you want a shower.” Her tone implied that she thought he needed one.

  “Thanks.” He sat down on the bed and began pulling his boots off. She wrinkled her nose and closed the door. As Keller pulled off his socks, he realized how tired he was. He lay back on the bed. His initial impression was correct. It was a very comfortable bed. He fell asleep before he could stop himself.

  RIDDLE SAT at the side of the highway, by the iron fence bordering the Leonard property. In the distance, the house caught the light of the lowering afternoon sun and glittered like a jewel in the desert. He shifted the toothpick in his mouth and considered. The place was well-protected, but not invulnerable. The biggest problem was the owner. Keller was nobody, a small-timer with no connections and no value. But the rich lesbian who owned this place was another matter. He’d done his research. She didn’t just have money, she had political connections, and her partner had even more. If they ended up being collateral damage, there might be scrutiny.

  He grimaced. It was a different world than he’d grown up in, when people like that mattered. Still…the germ of a plan was coming to him. He recalled some of the information in the dossier that Cordell had given him. This Keller seemed to have a real talent for pissing people off. Those people could be useful. He picked up his cell phone and dialed. The first person he dialed gave him another number, which led him to a third party who gave him yet another. The person at that number told him to leave a message and that someone would call him back. That was progress, he figured. He started the car and drove away, back toward the city of Phoenix.

  KELLER AWOKE with a start to the knocking on his door. He looked at the clock on the bedside table. “Shit.” He’d slept for three hours. He never had gotten that shower.

  The knock came again. “Dinner.” It was the maid’s voice. It wasn’t a voice one could oppose.

  “Be right there,” he said. There was no answer. He pulled a clean shirt and jeans out
of his travel bag and quickly changed into them.

  Rebecca Leonard greeted him at the door to the dining room. She was casually dressed in jeans and a red silk blouse, and Keller relaxed slightly. For all he knew, dinner here could have been a white tie affair. “Please come in,” she said with the same formal tone she’d used earlier.

  Erin Alford was already seated at a large, rustic-looking wooden dining table. There was a bottle in front of her that looked like beer, but he couldn’t make out the label. She started to get up as Keller came in the room, but he waved her back down. A young Latino man in a white jacket appeared at his elbow. “Something to drink, sir?”

  Keller pointed. “Yeah, I’ll have what she’s having. Please.”

  “Very good, sir,” the young man said, “and how do you like your steak cooked?”

  Keller didn’t answer at first. He was distracted by the sight of the holstered gun on the young man’s hip. “Ah, medium rare,” he said. The young man nodded and disappeared as quickly as he’d come. Keller took a seat. “Sorry, I kind of crashed on you.”

  “Not a problem, Jack,” Leonard said. “We know you probably needed the rest. Jail is no place to get any real sleep.”

  “Yeah. Thanks again for giving me the place to regroup.”

  The young man appeared with the beer and a pilsner glass. “Glass, sir?” Keller looked over. Alford didn’t seem to have one. “No, thanks.” He took the beer from the young man’s hand, but still didn’t recognize the label. He took a drink. It was a good brew, full-bodied, with a slight bite to it.

  “Brewed in Flagstaff,” Alford said. “Becca owns the brewery, too.”

  “Beer and guns,” Keller said. “I’m surprised they haven’t made you governor by now.”

  “Give it time,” Alford said.

  Leonard smiled. “I think Arizona will have to come a long way before that happens.”

  The young man had returned and stood in what Keller assumed was the door to the kitchen. “Dinner will be in five minutes, ma’am.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, Alex.” Alex went back into the kitchen.

  Keller took a sip of his beer. “You expecting trouble?”

  Leonard inclined her head curiously. “No more than usual, why?”

  Alford spoke up. “I think he’s wondering why Alex was carrying.”

  “Ah.” She regarded him with the look a teacher might give a slow student. “The question, Mr. Keller, is why shouldn’t an American citizen be carrying a firearm, as is his right?”

  Keller shrugged. “Just seems a little much for dinner. After all, you don’t seem to be strapped.”

  The gun appeared on the table in front of her so fast it was like a magic trick. Keller blinked at it, then looked up. “Sorry. My mistake.”

  “It was clipped under the table,” Alford said. “I have one, too.”

  Keller took another sip of his beer. He didn’t know what to say.

  “Mr. Keller,” Leonard said.

  “Jack,” he murmured.

  “Jack. I’m an out lesbian living in Arizona. I’m very outspoken, some would say mouthy. I’m also rich, with a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of artwork on the walls alone. We’re twenty minutes from the nearest law enforcement, even if they came at top speed, which they may or may not, all things considered. Every day, I see more senseless killings, more home invasions, more terrorists inside our country. You may think I’m paranoid. My question is, am I paranoid enough?”

  Keller realized then who Becca Leonard reminded him of. Colonel Nathaniel Harland had been a highly decorated soldier who had come home from the Vietnam conflict with the unshakable conviction that civilization was at the edge of collapse. After writing a bestselling book on the subject he had taken his book money, gathered a few followers, and retreated to a camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to await the end of the world. When that end had been slow to come, his followers had drifted slowly away, leaving only Harland and his adopted daughter. The daughter had been killed, but for all he knew, Harland was still up in the mountains.

  At the time he’d written his book, and for long after, Harland had been regarded as a crank, a curiosity, a paranoid loon, if entertaining to read and to see on a talk show. Now, it seemed, his view of the world had gone mainstream. Keller could see the same light in Becca Leonard’s eyes, an almost Messianic gleam of total assurance that she was one of the few who really understood what was happening to the world and knew what to do about it. He didn’t know what to say, but he resolved to get out of there as soon as he decently could.

  The silence was broken by Alex’s return, accompanied by the maid Marta. They were carrying plates which they rapidly distributed to the people at the table. Keller found himself looking more closely at Marta to see if she too was armed. He thought he saw the outline of something heavy in the front pocket of her maid’s apron. Keller turned his attention to the food, which was excellent. Keeping his mouth full kept him from having to provide much conversation. He noticed that Leonard and Alford didn’t seem to have much to say to each other. There was clearly some sort of tension between them.

  When the meal was done, Leonard turned to Keller and regarded him with that steady, disconcerting gaze. “Now,” she said, as if calling a meeting to order, “would you like coffee while we discuss where you go next?”

  “Sure,” Keller said, although the idea of planning the next few days with this woman caused his gut to tighten.

  The coffee, too, was excellent, served in heavy handmade pottery mugs. Leonard took a sip, closed her eyes in pleasure, then nodded at Alex, who nodded back and retired through the kitchen door. She looked at Keller. “There are quite a few people interested in your story.”

  Keller took a drink of his own coffee, keeping his face impassive. “What story is that? And how, exactly, did these people find out about it?” He looked across the table at Alford, who looked away. She was clearly not happy about the direction of the conversation.

  Leonard ignored the look. “A veteran, seeking to discover the truth about what happened to him in the war, targeted by his government, denied his freedom of travel, locked up on trumped up charges…it’s a pretty compelling story.”

  “So much for attorney-client privilege,” Keller said.

  Alford’s voice was bitter. “And so much for thinking what I told my wife was going to stay between us.”

  “This is important, Erin,” Leonard said.

  Alford stood up and tossed her napkin down. “So was being able to trust you, Rebecca.” She left the room.

  Leonard sighed as if she’d just been disrespected by a wayward child who’d need a good talking to later. She turned back to Keller. “Look,” he said before she could speak again. “Like I said, I appreciate the hospitality. But I’m not a cause. I just want to be left alone.”

  “I doubt that that’s going to happen, Jack. And from what I can tell, it’s not really what you want.”

  Keller was getting angry. “You don’t have any idea what I want.”

  She answered him calmly. “You want the person who killed your lover. You think maybe he’ll come after you again. And then you want to kill him. I can completely understand that.”

  It was all true, but hearing it laid out like that just made Keller angrier. “If that’s true, and I’m not saying it is, that’s my business, Ms. Leonard. Not yours.”

  She smiled grimly. “You think you can take these forces on alone?”

  Keller stood up. “I’ll be leaving in the morning.”

  She looked amused. “And going where?”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s worked out so well for you so far.”

  He bit back the reply that sprang to his lips and left the room. Back in his room, he sat on the edge of the bed, fuming. He just wanted to be out of there, away from people who kept interfering in his life. He got up and paced the room, trying to get himself under control. When he heard the knock o
n his door, he nearly yanked it open to snarl at the person on the other side, but stopped himself at the last second and pulled it open.

  It was Erin Alford. Her eyes were red as if she’d been crying. She was holding another bottle of beer in her hand. “Hey,” she said. “I just wanted to apologize.” He didn’t answer. After a moment, he stepped aside and let her in. He took the chair across the room while she walked unsteadily to the bed. She was clearly drunk. She took a long pull from the beer, then stared at the floor. “I thought I could talk over things with my wife and have it stay between us.”

  Keller wasn’t inclined to let her off the hook. “Guess you were wrong.”

  She looked up at him, her face a picture of misery. “I could lose my license for this.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t have the time to file or pursue a complaint. You’ll just have to live with it.”

  She sighed. “You still have the charges from stealing the van to deal with. I’ll see who I can find to represent you on those, if you like.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” He stood up. “If that’s all, I’m going to get that shower I missed earlier.”

  “Yeah. Fine.” She stood up as well. “Where are you going to go tomorrow?”

  He looked out the window at the desert, illuminated by the full moon. “Back home, I guess.”

  “Home? The bar?”

  “I’ll get the rest of my stuff. Then move on. I don’t know where. Maybe to see this guy who claims to be my father. I don’t know.”

  “I’ll drive you as far as the bar. You shouldn’t leave the jurisdiction, though. You’re still under bond.” Keller didn’t answer. “And Jack, again, I’m sorry. Becca sometimes lets her passions blind her to the people that might get hurt.”

  “Yeah,” Keller said. “I’ve already met too many people like that. Some of them have tried to kill me. So don’t expect me to like her any better for it.”