Hard Return

by J. Carson Black

  With any luck they would just wheel him inside the crematory and load him in the oven.

  The gurney’s wheels collapsed as he shoved the gurney and its contents inside. As he was shutting the van’s doors, he heard tires on gravel. His back was to the alley, so he went about his business, looking like a guy who had been called out to a death early in the morning and had a long day ahead of him.

  The car stopped, the engine still running. Landry saw it out of the corner of his eye—a black-and-white cop car. He ignored it, making a big deal of checking the straps over the body bag.

  The cop called out, “That from the scene on Seventh Street?”

  Landry glanced back, just a quick “hello” smile, and said, “Don’t know.” He kept his face turned away and worked the strap on the gurney.

  The car engine changed. It was the sound of the air-conditioner fan.

  Then the cop shifted into park. “Hey. You in there.”

  Landry almost froze, but didn’t. He moved around in the van, like he was doing something.

  The cop said, “Just wanted to warn you, better get ready. You think you’re busy now.”

  “What happened?” Landry said, still rumbling around inside the van.

  “Meth lab blew. At least five dead. Hear the sirens?”

  Landry did hear them. They were far away. Coyotes sang along with them.

  “Anyway,” the cop said. “You’re gonna get slammed. This’ll be a very busy day for everybody. Good luck.” He shifted the car back into drive and continued up the alley.

  Landry got back to Jolie’s place shortly after that. He and Jolie had a lot to catch up on, but right now she had to go into work.

  She came back a half hour later. “I’ve got two weeks off minimum. But I’ll be on administrative leave for the indefinite future. They’ve already made the determination that everything I did was well within the force continuum.”

  “So you’re okay?”

  “It was righteous. But I’m still supposed to go see a psychologist. Keeping the job is contingent on that. I told them I had to get away for a while, maybe leave town for a bit, but I’d be back bright and bushy tailed at the end of next week to see the psychologist.”

  “Will you?”

  “I might go once. You know I had to go through all that before . . . after Florida.”

  “Did it help?”

  She shrugged. “Kind of.”

  “So after you go to the psychologist. Then what?”

  She shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’ll either stay on, or they’ll find an excuse to let me go. Who knows? I’ll find something, I guess.”

  Landry said, “What about the BATF? What about the FDLE?”

  “Doubt they’d want a troublemaker.”

  “Troublemaker? You’re a hero.”

  “I attract trouble. First, Florida. And now this.”

  Landry said nothing. She was a hero, yes, but there was something unlucky or at least “off” about her, and everyone knew it. First, Florida—a massacre of immense proportions. Helicopters, black-ops teams, firefights—the island had looked like a movie set for a dystopian action film. And then an audacious bank robbery, semiautomatic weapons and all.

  And Jolie standing there in the street with her twelve-gauge shotgun.

  Landry had seen the tabloids after Florida, calling Jolie “the Terminator” and “Annie Oakley on Steroids” and all sorts of ridiculous captions. And now here she was again, top of mind. A hero, again. And the fact was, most organizations despised heroes. They paid lip service to them, posed with them, medaled them, but what they really wanted was to get back to work, and heroes made that virtually impossible. Cops didn’t want the light shined on all that they did.

  He knew that deep down, they probably just wanted her to go away.

  “So what are you going to do if they let you go?”

  “Make a living. Somehow.”

  “How?”

  “Private security, maybe. I’ll figure it out.” She looked at him. “I never told, you know.”

  “I figured that.”

  “But you had to check me out anyway.”

  “I read about the brother. I figured he’d be heading your way.”

  “You didn’t need to worry.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “You know what I want to do?”

  Landry didn’t. Then he did.

  She was not all that tall. She would fit comfortably against him, so he could kiss the top of her head. He reached out his arm and drew her to him, or she drew him to her, he wasn’t quite sure, and before he knew it they were across the doorstep of the house and in the front room and then in the bedroom, the sun finally up and streaming through the window, and he liked that she had already made the bed, neatly with a quilt, and he thought, Too bad we’re about to mess it up again—

  And they fell into it.

  Jolie was sleeping. It was already midmorning, and she was out like a light. Landry wasn’t the best authority on human nature, but he’d seen a lot of war and he knew that she had been through a lot the last few days. She’d taken three lives, and witnessed him snap a man’s neck like a pretzel.

  He thought he might have taken advantage of her, but that was not the way it felt. It felt like a two-way street.

  He also knew that their frantic lovemaking probably didn’t mean much. It was in the aftermath of a killing. The adrenaline was up, they had recognized that they were of like mind when it came to the third brother, and more than that it became clear to them both that they needed some kind of release. All this he knew almost instinctively, because normally he didn’t believe in delving into emotions. Too much overthinking.

  But he had been in war and he knew what people were like. And she was acting like a lot of the men he’d seen over the years, after a dangerous mission. After a close brush with death.

  He guessed that Jolie felt it, too, because afterward she’d popped up and said, “I have a great idea!” And then she’d padded into the kitchen and made them a late breakfast—a feta cheese omelet with hot sauce and some wheat toast on the side. And when they were almost finished with breakfast she’d said, “Just a minute” and “I’ve got to change clothes” (even though she’d just ten minutes before donned the clothes she had on), and then she went into the bedroom. He’d waited, finishing his eggs and drinking coffee. He’d waited some more, washing up and wiping down the table, and finally he went outside to enjoy the coolness of the morning. Eventually he’d gone back in and there she was, out cold.

  She needed to sleep, and he needed to think.

  His mind went back to the one kid, Devin Patel. The kid who only merited two lines in the LA Times “In Memoriam” section. Landry had Googled the kid and the only thing that came up was a mention that he’d won a radio contest a couple of years ago—an all-expenses-paid ticket to an Insane Clown Posse concert in Detroit, Michigan. The contest was sponsored by a soft drink company called Faygo and included an exhortation for “Juggalos” to “Watch this spot.”

  He went back outside with his new iPad and looked up “Juggalo.” The Urban Dictionary described Juggalos as white kids who glorified the musical group Insane Clown Posse. Other descriptions included hip-hop (but not really), metal (but not really), and rap (but nowhere near good enough to qualify). The followers of the “horrorpop” group Insane Clown Posse (ICP for short) were described as “losers,” “greasy fat teenagers,” and “cowards.” Apparently, anyone could contribute to the Urban Dictionary.

  Juggalos were as low on the food chain as “wiggers.” So he looked up “wiggers.” According to Wikipedia, “wiggers” was slang for white people who emulated the “manners, language and fashions associated with the African American culture.” Then he looked up “Insane Clown Posse.” ICP was a duo of artists who emphasized death and clowns, using Joker memes alo
ng with their music to “tell their stories,” and played to the lowest common denominator with violent themes and scary clowns. Maybe like an acting troupe with music.

  He looked at the photo of Devin Patel again. In a way, Devin fit the description in the Urban Dictionary. His face was pasty white and his eyes were empty and his mouth was slack. He was overweight. The Juggalo crowd was not one of the most popular groups in school, which might explain why Devin Patel had only two lines in the LA Times “In Memoriam” section.

  Landry stared at photos of the Insane Clown Posse, which didn’t seem all that different from the old band Kiss. At least he couldn’t see any real difference. Bad boys, lots of satanic stuff, lots of white makeup, lots of tight leather pants, lots of noise.

  Was there an evil cult around the Insane Clown Posse? Maybe.

  He heard the screen door creak open and footsteps on the wood planks of the low porch.

  Jolie stepped out, wearing an army T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Her hair was pinned up in a bun, but this time it was loose and attractive rather than cop-like.

  She came and sat down beside him. “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “Insane Clown Posse.”

  “And who are they?”

  “Some band.”

  “They look like a Stephen King nightmare.”

  Landry shrugged.

  Jolie pushed a strand behind her ear. “So what’s going on?”

  He told her about the school shooting. He told her about the kids, including his daughter and Luke. He told her about Devin Patel and his two lines in “In Memoriam” and his obsession with the Insane Clown Posse.

  “So you think he had something to do with it? But he was killed, wasn’t he?”

  “He could have been the one. The one among many.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The rest could have been shot to make it look like a school shooting. The shooter was supposed to get away.”

  She frowned and rested her elbow on her knee and her fist under her chin. “You think?”

  “I think. But I don’t know.” He didn’t add that it was most likely that the “one among many” was his own daughter.

  “It’s a place to start, I guess.” Then she looked into his eyes. Her eyes were clear and forthright. They were gray blue or gray green, depending on the light. He remembered that from their time on the island. “What are you going to do next?” she asked.

  “I need to find out who’s behind this.”

  “Behind the shooting? How do you do that?”

  “I was thinking you could help.”

  “Help?”

  “I was thinking you could take a look at the kids who were killed.”

  “Me?”

  He showed her the pages torn from the newspaper. “It’s online—easy to find. I thought you could look into their backgrounds, see if anything crops up.”

  She unfolded the two pages and looked at the memorials and the photos. “But they’re in LA.”

  “I thought you could look into it—see if you can find any leads.”

  “I’m not there. I don’t think—”

  “Maybe you can narrow it down.”

  She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at him with her clear eyes. “That’s a tall order, trying to do it just from what you have here.”

  “And what’s on the Internet.”

  “And what are you going to do while I run down leads?”

  “I’m going to do what I do best—find out who the shooter is.”

  A crease materialized between her brows. “How are you going to do that? I heard they can’t identify him. The guy—”

  “—was a pro.”

  “So? There are a lot of those around.”

  “There are ways to find people.”

  “Like how?”

  “Make people come to me.”

  She looked at him, mystified. Finally, she said, “How do you do that?”

  He said, “By going to Austria.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Danielle Perez, 18: Danielle was a cheerleader who planned to become a doctor. She had her eyes set on UCLA’s premed program. Danielle received several citations and awards for working with animal and children’s charities. Her favorite musical group was Imagine Dragons and she recently saw them in concert. She spoke fluent Spanish, loved to ride in the Alameda Creek on her horse, Teddy, and lavished love on her dachshund, Tippy. She is survived by her parents and her sister, Jessica. —“In Memoriam” Special Section, the Los Angeles Times

  Landry sat at an outdoor table at the Café Angelika in Graz, Austria. He was on display. He had dressed in a black short-sleeved tee that revealed his upper-body musculature and his one tattoo—a snarling mountain lion’s head. He wore tan combat-style cargo pants with Velcroed pockets up and down the legs, combat boots, and aviators that both reflected the Graz scene and hid his eyes. His hair was short but not too short—he wasn’t military, but he still adhered to rigid grooming. He sat by himself, his back to the shaded wall of the café, a steaming cup of coffee near his fingertips. His posture conveyed relaxed awareness—that he was cognizant of his surroundings, alert to possible danger, and watchful. This was what the people he was seeking would expect to see.

  Even behind the mirrored aviators, beyond his stillness, it was clear that his eyes roved the square constantly.

  Landry was telling them—the people who mattered, the people who knew—that he was available, and that they would have to come to him.

  If you want a terrorist, go to Yemen.

  If you want an assassin, float through Austria.

  Using the Jeffery Peterman alias, Landry had booked a flight from El Paso, Texas, to Graz, Austria, at the bargain price of $1,195.

  Landry knew that the right people would immediately recognize who and what he was. Austria was a hub—an easy jumping-off place to other countries. Civilians were used to strangers, people with unknown agendas, hanging around the cafés. They ignored him—live and let live.

  He’d put out feelers since arriving yesterday. A few words here, a few words there. Most of those words were confined to the Reisebüro Fasching, a travel agency tucked inside the picturesque Gasthof, Hotel Sonnenblick (“Hotel Sunshine”), where he stayed. Hotel Sonnenblick was at the edge of the city, up a road that wound through a spectacular forest. The Gasthof had a fine view, good food, few tourists, and a beautiful open-air terrace. The travel agency tucked inside never seemed to have clients. It was a small cubby with posters of trams and scenic river trips and Alpine ski vacations. The man who ran the travel agency knew Landry from years ago when he had helped them move a client out of Bosnia.

  A long time ago, but the man was still there, still working both sides of the fence.

  Landry had presented his credentials—the clean passport and a United States DL for Jeffery Peterman. They were the real thing, as far as anyone who knew anything was concerned. If they weren’t picture-perfect credentials, the people who mattered would see through them immediately. Landry had waited a long time to use Jeffery Peterman. He’d made sure to keep Jeffery’s passport current.

  And so he visited various cafés and waited.

  People came by, checking him out. Sitting at a table next to him, striking up a simple conversation, a quick word here and there.

  And then they were gone.

  Graz was the second-largest city in Austria. It was also very old. The year Landry first saw Graz, circa 1992, he encountered a few old German Nazis on the Strassenbahn. These men wore the traditional lederhosen, smelled bad, and radiated hatred. He saw one of them kick an old woman down the steps of the tram and slash at her with his cane.

  Later that night, the old man died of a stroke in the Gasthof where he’d been staying.

  It looked like natural causes.

  Graz was
a sophisticated, culturally alive city with classically elegant buildings dating back to medieval times, many stunning modern buildings, incredibly efficient public transportation, and a thriving arts and music scene. But the crumbling underneath hinted at the not-so-secret story of Austria. Beautiful as it was, Graz—and Austria itself—was a Baskin-Robbins for specialists: there was something for everybody. Austria’s law-enforcement entities were loosely controlled. It was a place where operators could always connect with potential employers. A reliable marketplace.

  Most of the old Nazis were gone now. But in their place were hard men for the taking in Austria. Men with skills.

  The police looked the other way. They wanted no trouble. They did not generally draw their firearms, no matter what the confrontation.

  And so Landry sat on display in various cafés and waited, sometimes in the shade, sometimes in the sun, the ancient wall at his back, attentive to those who came and sat nearby to check him out. Sipping his coffee and watching the Strassenbahns load and disgorge their human cargo. The trams were more modern than he remembered, although the old ones—green and yellow—still plied the streets. They ran like caterpillars, fast and efficient, alongside the traffic, the whistle and hum of the lines above them a constant sound. Slowing and stopping and starting off again—endless. The indoor and outdoor cafés were plentiful. People walked through the streets and squares, shopping in the open air. Wares pulled out onto old stoneflagged walkways in the shadows of ornate old buildings. The young and the old alike going through racks and racks of clothing.

  Landry had set his line and now he waited for a bite. He didn’t need a cardboard sign to alert the people he wanted to meet with.

  He was in excellent shape. You knew he was the real thing just by looking at him. By his stillness, by his attitude, he made his presence known. He struck up conversations in the open-air cafés, bars, and restaurants. He never mentioned what he did for a living; they always danced around it. Just general stuff. The waiter might leave a card for him along with the check.