Hard Return

by J. Carson Black

  Using the landline, Landry punched in Keller’s extension. He reached a recording saying Keller was out of the office. That was fine with him. The special agent would see the City Hall number come up on the ID as “Municipal”—one of three ways a caller ID came out of a police station. Landry left Keller a message, saying he’d talked to Detective Ruckman at Torrent Valley. That he’d worked a similar case in his own jurisdiction in Montana, and would like to compare notes. He added that he would be out of the office—he was on vacation at the moment—so Keller should try his cell.

  Landry wasn’t worried about Keller getting back to him. Desperation was a strong motivator, and Landry sensed there was plenty of desperation with a puzzling case like this one. A school shooter shot and killed by an anonymous sniper? He’d call back just out of curiosity.

  Landry left the City Hall office and walked down the hallway and out the doors into the desert sunshine. Back in his car he cranked up the AC and drove back to the hotel parking garage. As he reached the elevator, his phone chimed.

  Keller.

  His voice gruff, Keller introduced himself and said, “I hear you have some information on a similar shooting.”

  No hello, no how’re you doing. Some FBI agents were like that. Maybe they watched Dragnet reruns too many times as little kids.

  One of the greatest tools available to man was the ability to mirror the person he was speaking with. People love their own mirror images. They loved to talk to themselves, or reasonable facsimiles of themselves. So Landry spoke in the same kind of shorthand. He launched into a dry description of the shooter at the community college, his escape from the school, the crash, and how he vanished into the mountains. He said it concisely and neutrally—no hail-fellow-well-met. Copspeak.

  “Interesting. Is your theory that we are dealing with the same subject?”

  “At first glance, it looks like the same deal, which is why I am calling.”

  “I’m calling you.”

  Anal-retentive. He could work with that. “Do you think there may be a connection?” Landry asked.

  “Doubtful.” But he didn’t hang up.

  “It sure is a puzzler, which is why I called you. Do you have a make and model on the vehicle he left behind?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t share that information. You understand. Ongoing investigation.”

  “I understand. The man we were seeking—still are seeking—I was hoping we were seeing something similar. We believe our guy stayed with his vehicle, and found a way to hide it.”

  “Our man didn’t have a chance to do that.”

  “Because he was shot and killed.”

  “Yes.”

  “This sounds a lot like the guy we’re looking for. Did his car have Montana plates?”

  “No, the vehicle did not have Montana plates.”

  Talking to this guy was like trying to pull a sliver out of your finger. “I’m thinking that the shooter in Zephyr favored a particular kind of vehicle. A big SUV with four-wheel drive. The kind a wealthy rancher would drive.” Feeling like he was playing Twenty Questions.

  “Do you have any photos of your shooter?” the SA asked. “From the school cameras?”

  “Unfortunately, the school was new, and they hadn’t gotten around to putting cameras in yet.”

  “Oh. Too bad.”

  Landry said, “A witness saw him, though.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Describe your guy and I’ll tell you.”

  Silence on the other end.

  Crickets . . .

  Landry started mentally counting down from one hundred. Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven.

  Landry hit eighty-three when the SA spoke up. “Might as well tell you—a description will be in the news tomorrow. Caucasian male, five foot nine inches in height, one ninety in weight. Brown and blue.”

  “Was he fit?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of car?”

  Silence again. Then, “Two thousand eleven Chevy Tahoe, dark green, four-wheel drive. Wiped clean. Stolen.”

  “Stolen? From where?”

  “San Diego. Three days before the shooting. Now, your turn. Did anyone get a good look at your man?”

  “The driver of the car he ran into,” Landry said. “He described him as medium size, medium build, brown hair. The man wore dark glasses so he couldn’t see his eyes. Dressed in black, bulky around the torso, so the driver thought he might be wearing a bulletproof vest. He wasn’t sure about age. Somewhere between twenty and forty.”

  Silence once more. Then, grudgingly, “Sounds like ours.”

  “What about his teeth?”

  “We’re still running that down.”

  “Any distinguishing marks?”

  “Couple of moles.”

  Moles. Thank you for sharing.

  “And a bullet wound in his calf. Old. So you’re in Zephyr, Montana? Never heard of it.”

  “You been to Kalispell?”

  “I wish.”

  Bingo.

  “You know Montana?” Landry asked.

  “No. But I know enough to want to go there—it’s a fly-fishing paradise.”

  “You got that right—Montana’s God’s country. My brother has a lodge up here just west of Zephyr.”

  “Oh?”

  Landry sensed a sudden spring in the SA’s step. “High Mountain Outdoor Adventures.”

  Keller said, “Where’s Zephyr?”

  “Oh, it’s just a little wide spot in the road . . .” He consulted the map. “Off Highway 93. Not that far from Kalispell as the crow flies. Hard to believe we’d get a guy shooting up a school out here. But I guess nobody’s safe.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Loosening up.

  Keller said, “Your brother’s lodge?”

  “That’s right, and let me tell you, it’s like heaven up here.” Landry Googled “Kalispell and mountain ranges.” “When I retire I’m gonna join my bro and lead packing trips up into the . . .” He had a choice of two: Swan or Salish mountain ranges. Pick one: “. . . Swan Mountains. We’re kind of a cross between a guest ranch and a hunting lodge. Hang on, I’ll send you some pics.”

  “The fishing’s good?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s Montana. Hey, if you can help me find out if this is the same guy, shoot, I’m sure Dan will give you a free trip. All you’d have to do is get here.”

  “No kidding?”

  Thrill to the sight of an FBI agent transforming into a hopeful little boy in the space of twenty seconds.

  “Hey,” Landry said. “I’m a man of my word. This shooting has been giving me fits. My sister-in-law has a daughter who goes to that college. She saw her best friend get shot. Still has nightmares. So you better believe it, anything you can do to clear this up. I just want to know, you understand?”

  “Yeah, I hear you.”

  Landry heard typing on a keyboard. “What kind of trout you have up there? Rainbows, of course—”

  “Oh, we have rainbows all right. And westslope cutthroats. You have to see them to believe ’em.”

  “Oh, man.”

  “Say,” Landry said. “Your guy—the shooter—he wasn’t Muslim, was he?”

  Gilding the lily?

  “Nah. But he was a lowlife just the same. Tell you what—if there’s a break in the case, I’ll be in touch. These two cases really could be related.”

  He hesitated. Landry thought he wanted to say more, but he’d stopped himself. So Landry filled the void. “All’s I can say, bro, this is God’s country up here. What’s your e-mail addy? I’ll send you the pics.”

  The agent rattled off his address.

  “All right,” Landry said. “We’re good. Anything you can do on your end.”

  “Better b
elieve it. Westslope cutthroat trout. Never caught one of those. Never even seen one of those. I always wanted to go to Montana, but, you know . . . an FBI agent’s salary . . .”

  “I hear you. You won’t believe how nice it is up here. Dan knows what he’s doing—he’s the man. He’ll set you up, don’t you worry. Knows the backcountry like nobody else. We’ve been in the business since 1926.”

  He was enjoying this too much. Time to get off.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Keller said.

  I’m sure you will.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jolie Burke awoke to the clamoring voices of the coyotes out on the bajada. She lay in bed thinking that Tejar, New Mexico, was one hard little nut of a town.

  Maybe that impression came from the prison looming over the cotton field across the road. Or the old trucks and older people, leather faces shut up tight. Don’t you tread on me!

  Jolie loved the land Tejar was on. She knew so much of it by heart—the dry air, the desert, the aching sky. Jolie herself was born western, and yet the people in Tejar didn’t see her that way.

  But Tejar wasn’t like Hatch, New Mexico, where she’d spent the early part of her childhood. In Hatch there were shady cottonwoods and a timelessness that moved along with the Rio Grande. Big Mexican families, roadside vegetable stands, the smell of roasted chilies in the black iron barrel outside the grocery mart.

  Hatch was cheerful.

  In Tejar, nearly everyone was combat ready and anxious to get started. Jolie never had to go farther than the front step of the post office or the sit-down counter at the diner to see it brewing. Discontent rode a hair trigger and there were many times when her fingers itched to close around the grip of her SIG Sauer, just to make herself feel better.

  Time to get going. Jolie Burke started the coffee, showered, and dressed in her deputy’s uniform. Strapped on her duty belt as she walked to the refrigerator, her mind already on the job.

  Sometimes, late at night when the wind blew off the bajada, Jolie imagined she could hear the shouts of marital discord, the screams of terrified children, the last gasp of an illegal dying in the New Mexican desert. All these voices mingled together, entreating her to intervene.

  The belief that she could ride in like the cavalry and take every hill had been ingrained deeply inside her. But now she knew that the idea of one person saving the world was a fantasy.

  Now she knew you just had to keep on going, making what small differences you could, and do the job assigned you. Her dad had a saying that he’d learned at his mother’s knee—it came from a hymn.

  “Brighten the corner where you are.”

  Jolie took it to heart.

  Jolie ate her usual breakfast of wheat toast and an egg, scrambled, with hot sauce made from Hatch chilies.

  Her uniform pressed, her boots shined, her service weapon cleaned, Jolie stepped off the low porch of the renovated bunkhouse she rented from the sheriff’s cousin. The one good thing about the ramshackle place was the enormous cottonwood tree that spread its shade over the yard—she’d rented this place specifically because of the cottonwood tree. Because it reminded her of Hatch.

  The morning was already hot. The heat lay on her hair, even though it was coiled into a neat bun, and slanted down past the rim of her dark glasses and into her eyes.

  She drove the three blocks to the sheriff’s office, got the daily briefing from overnight (petty crimes, one domestic, and ongoing surveillance on a suspected meth house) and got rolling.

  Tejar was a town of twelve thousand people. The main employer was the private prison that had gone up two years ago. It had attracted one new development on the outskirts of town, but in Jolie’s opinion, the development, Shade Tree Village, was headed for failure. Tejar was a place where the recession had hit hard. Only the toughest and meanest were able to hang on—and they didn’t like to share.

  Which led to a lot of adventures.

  Sometimes Jolie wondered what was wrong with her that she’d choose such an antisocial kind of town. A town that came from nowhere and was only going to go downhill from there.

  The truth was, Jolie only came here because Tejar was in New Mexico and there was a job opening.

  Sometimes she wondered who she was. She’d turned down three solid-if-not-spectacular offers: from the BATF, the US Treasury Department—specifically the Secret Service—and the FDLE.

  All she’d wanted to do after Florida was go back to her roots. After the whirlwind of a high-profile trial and over-the-top television, Internet, and print coverage, Jolie only wanted to go home.

  She wanted quiet.

  She wanted anonymity—and she had it.

  Boy, did she have it.

  She drove to the outskirts of town, looking for trouble. From where she was, the town was in a shallow bowl of land, and it looked like a circuit board that had been cracked in a few places, mostly by the dry riverbed that ran through town. Then she drove the plat of six streets downtown—the north–south streets four lanes, the east–west streets two lanes. Half the shops on the main drag closed up. Plenty of cars, though.

  She drove past Safe Harbor National Bank on the corner of McCarron and Juniper. The bank opened at ten, and it was just past seven thirty now. A couple of cars were in the parking lot. Jolie drove by, squinting against the sun. A woman in a blue suit walked briskly to the side entrance, went inside, and closed the solid door behind her. Jolie made the turn and drove past the front. She could see the lights on beyond the bank of windows near the ATM machine.

  She drove to the next street, made a U-turn, and drove back up the main drag, cruising past storefronts in Old Town and then farther out, past the IHOP, followed by an Olive Garden, a car wash, and another bank-slash–credit union—this one for the employees of the prison. She turned left and then left again on the street paralleling the first one. Second Street wasn’t as busy as the main street would be in another half hour when people commuted to their jobs. She passed a tire store, a Foot Locker, a Staples, and an older diner, Bart’s—right out of the sixties with mosaic rock facing on the wall by the front doors, and one long window where you could see the people in the booths and the globe lamps hanging down from long rods from the ceiling. They had good omelets there, and just thinking about it made her hungry.

  Jolie spotted some kid peering into the locked doors of the Sports Authority, so she slowed down and cruised by him and he looked at her furtively, and went back to walking. Shoulders slouched, hands in his pockets. He looked suspicious, but it could be due to the fact that he was young and the young always had something going on inside their heads. He wore the uniform: sweatshirt and hoodie, low-riding pants, boxers peeking demurely over the waistband—but that was really all she could see that pegged him as possible trouble, except for his darting eyes. She decided to round the block again. Oftentimes just the sight of a sheriff’s car kept them on the straight and narrow.

  As she turned left on the street one block down, she saw a car speed past on the main drag—right through the light.

  Something—she didn’t know what—kept her from using lights and the siren. As she reached the intersection, another car flashed past, this time with the light—a newer model, small car. Two cars speeding? One after the other?

  She accelerated to the intersection. The first one was blue, a new SUV of some kind—

  There was a loud collision—metal on metal, and glass.

  And the manic whooping of an alarm.

  Unbearably loud.

  Jolie made the corner, left tire bumping over the curb, and heard through her open window the dying-animal howl of an engine, then screeching tires. Ahead of her on the left she saw the blue SUV perpendicular to the street, blocking one lane, its nose crumpled against the building, mashed up against the Safe Harbor National Bank.

  An accident?

  Then the SUV’s tires chirped and it sh
ot backward, stopping in the middle of the street. A car had pulled up perpendicular to it—and at first Jolie thought it was because the SUV was blocking the lane. The car was stopped dead in the middle of the street: a small late-model silver car.

  The blue SUV’s engine roared. Even inside her own car she imagined she could hear the clunk of the differential as the SUV lurched into drive. With a rhino scream the SUV lunged forward and collided with the building and the ATM it was attached to.

  Jolie called it in, as she hit the gas.

  A car came out of a side street, middle of nowhere, and suddenly she corrected, almost overcorrected, and spun to the left and up onto the curb, the front fender barely missing the building next to the bank.

  ATM. Bank.

  Two men, bulky in black clothing, hoods on their heads, armed to the teeth, jumped out of the SUV and ran into the open building. It was a smash-and-grab—a smash-and-grab wedded to a bank robbery. There would be cars from the sheriff’s and PD momentarily, but for now, she was alone. The other car Jolie had first pegged as stalled in the outside lane—the silver car—looked like an abandoned toy. But it wasn’t abandoned—the engine was running. The silver car that had run the light—looked like a Mazda CX-5 model. The alarm bell yammered. Jolie saw one of the men barge out through the rubble and the glass, dragging a heavy bag in each hand. She reached back and grabbed her long gun from the bracket that held it fast. She had her service weapon, but these days, you almost always needed a long gun. You were naked without it. Cops these days were outgunned, anyway.

  Jolie’s weapon of choice was a twelve-gauge shotgun—one of the most powerful and effective firearms ever made. With a twelve-gauge, you didn’t need to be a marksman. All she needed to do was get close. One three-inch twelve-gauge Magnum double-aught buck putting out twenty-one nine-millimeter-sized lead balls would be devastating.