by Diane Capri
“Owner’s Alvin. Him and kid, Junior, the bouncer, they been running The Lucky for years.” He ran a hand hard over his head, and his feet started to slide out from beneath him on the ice. He slapped his palm onto the wall again as if it might glue him upright. He kept his feet. “They usually take care of things pretty good,” he said, “but this dude’s some kind of whack-job.”
“And the woman? Is she his wife or girlfriend?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Lotta strangers around here tonight on account of the road bein’ closed.” He tilted his chin toward the Interstate instead of peeling one of his hands away from the wall to point.
I looked directly into his eyes. After a moment, he refocused on me. “I’m FBI Special Agent Kim Otto. What’s your name?”
“Racine.”
“Racine.” I patted his arm. “I’ve called the police, but the storm will slow them down. You know this place. Can you help me out?”
“What, go back in there?” He shook his head violently from side to side, which moved his body away from the wall and caused his feet to slide again. When he’d twisted himself back into position, he said, “Are you crazy?”
Right. Crazy. Yes. For sure.
I took a deep breath. “Then can you at least stand here and keep everyone else outside? Don’t let anyone come in until the police arrive. Can I count on you to do that?”
He didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. There was a fifty-fifty chance that he’d run as soon as my back was turned.
“Any military inside tonight?”
“Most nights some guys are here from Bird. Yeah, that’s likely.” Then he was shaking his head. “Maybe not, though. A night like this, they coulda been confined to base.”
“If they’re here, would they be armed?” Even as I heard the hope in my voice, the answer was obvious. If there were soldiers inside with weapons, this thing would already have been handled.
Racine shook his head. “Alvin don’t allow no guns inside. He says booze and guns are a bad combination.”
Alvin was a smart guy.
“Thanks.” I patted his arm again and nodded. “Remember. Nobody comes in except the police.”
I turned away from him and faced the doorway. The last gunshots had been fired a couple of minutes ago. Maybe the shooting was over. I flashed my head around the doorjamb for a quick look inside.
The only lights in the place were the pulsing red, blue, and green floodlights bathing the elevated stage near the center. Dancing poles, the stage. Not quite what I’d imagined when the truck stop deliverywoman brought my sandwich and wine three hours ago, but close enough.
Beyond that, the interior was too dark to see much except for the thick, stinking clouds of cigar and cigarette smoke layering the air. The music played at ear-splitting volume with a throbbing pulse, which my own blood began to rhythmically match.
Then I could make out a long bar across the front wall to my right, with liquor bottles, draft beer pulls and such in the usual places. The rest of the bar’s floor space was filled with square tables and empty chairs. A dozen or more had been overturned, presumably when their occupants panicked and ran.
That’s when I noticed the scrawny blonde dancer on her knees on the stage. Her naked skin was washed sickly green by the floodlight beaming down on her. Her forearms were flat on the stage and her head rested face down between them. Maybe she was praying. She definitely should have been. But from this distance, I couldn’t tell.
Next, as my eyes continued to adjust to the scene, I saw splayed face down on the floor not far from the stage two men, each with double exit wounds, center mass, in the back. Their haircuts suggested they were Fort Bird residents.
And finally, behind the bar along the front wall to my right, were two men standing in the shadows. Both were about five-ten and well over two hundred pounds. The older guy was bald and wide all over. I couldn’t see his face. The younger one was bulky. His tight black T-shirt fit like a second skin. His head was shaved. He had thick arms and tattooed forearms, but what I could see of his stomach was fairly trim, which made him seem oddly misshapen. Steroids, probably. Both held weapons aimed across the stage toward the back of the room.
I pulled my head back and flattened against the exterior wall next to my petrified sentry again to take stock of my meager assets and catalog limited options.
It had been maybe fifteen minutes since I’d heard the first shots and called 911. No help had arrived. I wore no body armor. Hell, I didn’t even have a flashlight.
Going in there alone and without proper protection would be stupid.
But my hair hung in icicle strings. My suit stuck cold and clammy against my skin. My hands had begun to cramp around my gun.
I couldn’t simply wait here until hypothermia set in hoping for divine intervention, either. Only one choice.
I took another deep breath, raised my gun. Falling on my ass wouldn’t be helpful. I shuffled my shoes around the slick concrete, seeking and at last finding solid footing on the other side of the threshold.
One, two, three—before I reached go, more gunfire erupted inside. The first shots came from the back of the room, followed quickly by return fire from the front. The dancer screamed.
I scrambled back into position against the wall and out of the line of fire.
From this close, though still camouflaged by the incessant music, the shots were discernibly distinct. Three weapons, not four or more. Which meant the two men behind the bar outnumbered the one in the back shadows.
Retroactively counting the shots was impossible and served no useful purpose, as any of the three shooters could’ve reloaded. But all three must have had plenty of ammo at the start.
Just as I chanced another glance around the door frame, another round came from the back of the room. The older guy behind the bar grunted and fell back against the liquor bottles. He slapped his left palm against his right shoulder and fired back.
Junior let out some sort of crazy war cry and released rapid-fire rounds in the right direction.
The man in the back kept firing, too.
I ducked out again. My ears felt like they’d explode with the double percussion impact of noise and the music’s rhythmic effect on my pounding heart.
Then, as abruptly as it had started, the shooting stopped again.
A beat passed. Two.
Now was my chance.
From the doorway, not because I expected it to make any difference, I yelled into the gale of deafening music, “FBI! FBI! Weapons down! We’re coming in!”
CHAPTER 11
The first thing I noticed was the garish pink and green and blue floodlight wash that revealed the dancer, laid out on the floor of the stage. She was riddled with gunshot wounds. I counted six, but there could have been more. Her body had fallen onto her left side and dead eyes stared. Blood pooled under her stringy blonde hair.
I now realized it was the woman who had delivered my dinner from the truck stop a few hours ago. The medical examiner would sort out the bullets and determine which ones caused her death, but a shot to her head alone could have been fatal.
I kept my weapon ready as I squinted through the smoke layers. The two men on the ground with military haircuts that I’d seen from the doorway were not the only casualties. At least two more had fallen, from the looks of things while rushing the shooter.
He was dead, too. He’d been blown back against the far wall, and now sat slumped over at the waist. The top of his head was missing.
Only Alvin and Junior, behind the bar, were still standing. I pointed my puny Sig Sauer directly at them, wishing I had a missile launcher, and, taking advantage of a comparative lull in their insane sound system’s assault, shouted as loud as I could, “FBI! Guns down! Hands in the air!”
“Or what?” Junior bellowed, waving his weapon my way, muzzle up. “You’re no bigger than a minute. What do you think you can do to me?”
Good question. My bullets might slow him down or even stop hi
m. But he’d have plenty of time to kill me first.
Alvin raised his injured right arm and swung his open hand and slapped Junior on the ear hard enough to knock him sideways. “Watch your mouth and do what she told you.”
Junior regained his balance. As the music surged with renewed fury around us, he placed his weapon on the bar and raised his hands. Alvin put his down and raised one arm slightly. The other arm didn’t seem functional. Maybe the slap to Junior’s head had triggered additional damage to it. Blood ran down onto his hand and dripped onto the floor.
“Turn that music off!” I yelled.
Junior reached to the side of the bar and pressed something. The instant silence was a shock to my system. My blood had been pounding with the music’s rhythm and the sudden stop hit me like a quick side-fist punch to the heart.
“Come out from behind the bar. Slowly.” My voice sounded muffled and weak and raspy, probably from all the yelling. Or maybe my voice was normal and the problem was damage to my eardrums. “Keep your hands high.”
They walked as instructed. Alvin limped badly on his right leg, but I couldn’t see a bleeding wound anywhere. I didn’t have handcuffs with me, but even if I had, they’d never have encircled Junior’s massive wrists.
“Sit down here.” I pointed to two chairs close enough to the exit that I could hastily retreat, should the need arise.
They sat. As long as they wanted to do what I asked, we’d be fine.
How the hell long can it possibly take to get some squad cars out here, anyway?
“Don’t worry,” Alvin said. His shoulder was oozing blood, but he acted as if he couldn’t feel it. “Ain’t nobody left inside here to cause more trouble tonight. Everbody’s run out or dead. You call the sheriff and the medics?”
“They’re on their way.” I didn’t lower my gun or move my gaze even a fraction.
“Good.” Alvin lowered his chin to his chest like he’d run out of steam.
The last thing I needed was to lose him now. But if I moved any closer to deliver any kind of emergency aid, I’d be within easy striking distance. If Alvin clubbed me the way he’d clubbed Junior on the side of the head, he’d knock me into next week.
The best I could do was try to keep him talking.
“Tell me what happened here tonight.”
Alvin lifted his head and shifted in his seat to look at me. The move pulled his head out of the shadows into a blue wash pulsing spotlight and I got my first clear look at him. I clamped my mouth shut to hold back the gasp.
His face was covered with old straight razor scars. The cuts had been deep. The white scars crisscrossed over most of his forehead, both cheeks, and his chin. The scars glowed in the spotlight. His nose had been broken several times. It looked like a blob in the center of the latticed scars. His brows were gnarled and the eyes beneath them were the smallest things on his face.
No way would I want to meet either of these two anywhere without a full clip in my gun.
Again, I said, “Tell me what happened here tonight.”
“Guy wanted one of the girls. She didn’t want him.” Alvin shrugged. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Did you know him?”
“He was probably just passing through. Got stuck here like everybody else. Drank too much.” He shrugged again. “It happens.”
I believed him. The Lucky Bar was the kind of place where fights were common. He should have had medics on retainer.
Alvin looked toward the bodies. “Some of these boys was soldiers. You call out to Bird, too? Get the MPs on the way?”
“I did.”
“Good.” Alvin lowered his chin again as if he knew how extremely unpleasant his face was to watch.
“What about the woman?” My questions were partly to keep him occupied and partly to be sure he remained conscious. His blood loss was a problem. If the medics didn’t arrive soon, he could lose the arm, for sure. Or lose more than that.
“Gloria. She hadn’t been workin’ here very long. She was always a quiet one since she was a girl.”
“Gloria was a local woman?”
“Until she married.”
“I noticed your limp. Were you shot in the leg, too?”
Alvin looked up at me again. He blinked his tiny eyelids. His eyes looked like raisins in a giant dough ball. “Naw. Old injury to my knee. Twenty years back. I got the knee replaced, but the bones and muscles don’t work right.”
Junior glared at me like an angry Rottweiler. “And one of these days, we’ll find the asshole who did that, too.” His voice was curiously high-pitched for a big man. Steroids were probably responsible for that, too.
“What do you mean?”
“He was passin’ through. Ain’t never been back.” He stuck out his chin. His smallish hands flexed into fists on top of his massive thighs. “But the Army ain’t protectin’ him no more. Big, bad, cheap-shotting MP.” He sneered. “Won’t be neither so big or nor so bad once we find him. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
Big, bad, MP? Twenty years ago? “Do you know his name?” The frissons running up and down my central nervous system foretold the answer.
“Reacher. Jack Reacher.” He must’ve seen interest in my eyes because his eyes lit in return. “Oh, you know him. You know him?”
I shook my head. “Never met the man.”
But he wasn’t buying. “You see him,” he said, “you tell him to watch his back.”
On the list of Army don’ts that got Reacher busted back, Major Clifton had included civilian complaints. Reacher was only at Fort Bird a short time and he’d managed to make more enemies than a terrorist. No surprise.
Sirens wailed in the distance, moving toward The Lucky Bar, but they weren’t closing the gap fast enough. I stepped to the doorway and looked outside. Several people were still down on the pavement, but others were trying to render aid.
I counted seven men and two women injured on the ground. Others seemed to be simply waiting on the ground because standing on the ice was impossible.
I turned back and tilted my head toward the bodies inside the bar. “Will you sit here while I check on the others, Alvin? Can I trust you and Junior to do that?”
Alvin nodded. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere. Got nowhere to go.”
“Ain’t got much left here, neither,” Junior added.
“You have any overhead lights?”
Alvin pointed with his chin to a side wall near the bar. I walked a few steps and flipped the lights on.
The Lucky Bar had looked a lot better in the dark.
The place had been old and damaged before tonight’s melee destroyed everything beyond repair. The tables and chairs had been mismatched when they found their way to the bar at least three decades ago. They were chipped, broken, covered with the scars of a tough business. The stage was a shoddy affair, too.
I walked across the concrete floor, sticky with spilled booze, congealing blood, and other bodily fluids I didn’t want to dwell upon. To be sure, I checked for a pulse on all six bodies, the four soldiers, the dancer, and the gunman. As expected. Nothing.
From the back of the room, where I stood near the gunman’s body still slumped against the wall, I looked up to see Major Anthony Clifton walk through the door. A local cop was with him.
Clifton moved right past Alvin and Junior without stopping, heading toward the soldiers. He knelt to check carotid pulses with the same results I’d confirmed.
The local cop approached me. He was about sixty and fit, like a runner who lifted weights, too. A little under six-feet, maybe one-sixty or so. He wore the uniform well. Even the wide-brimmed hat suited him.
“Sheriff,” I nodded and held out my badge. A quick look was all he required. Most law enforcement officers know an FBI badge when they see one. “Special Agent Kim Otto.”
“Randy Taylor.” He looked down at the dead gunman. “What happened here?”
“Alvin says this guy wanted that woman and when she refused, he star
ted shooting.” My adrenaline levels had been falling to normal since the shooting stopped and I realized all of a sudden how freaking wet and cold I was, even in the hot room. My whole body was shaking. I had to clamp my teeth to still the chattering.
Taylor kept scanning, completing his own professional appraisal, presumably. “That seem like the truth to you?”
“I was asleep in my room across the road when the shots woke me up. I called 911 and Major Clifton. By the time I got here, everything was almost over.”
“You fire your weapon?” Taylor asked. “If you did, we’ll need to take it.”
“No chance to.” I shook my head and handed over my weapon so he could confirm and didn’t argue. We both knew the rules. “The shooting was over by the time I came inside.”
“We’ll want to talk to you for more details.” He seemed to see me for the first time. My wet clothes, chattering teeth, and blue skin. He checked my weapon and gave it back.
Clifton walked up. “We’ll have plenty to do tonight, Randy. She’ll freeze to death if she doesn’t get a hot shower and warmer clothes. You’re at the Grand Lodge across the street, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Check in with me before you leave town, Agent Otto?” It was a request. He had no authority over me.
I nodded again through my chattering teeth and turned to leave. Clifton bowed his head closer to me. “I’ll report to the locals and call you in an hour.”
Processing the crime scene would take a while, and processing the carnage would take weeks. There would be plenty of time for me to answer questions and ask a few of my own. Starting with what had happened between Jack Reacher and Alvin way back when. But the feud was old. My questions could wait. Assuming I didn’t freeze to death first.
“Works for me.” I holstered my gun and made my way out of the bar, navigated its frozen parking lot, the glazed highway, and the hotel’s parking lot, sleet lacing me every step of the way. By the time I trudged through the lobby and up the stairs and stepped into a steaming hot shower, my entire body was colder than a frozen turkey.
