Revenge of the Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  She said, “Should I bring my passport?”

  Mayhew snorted. “We’re just laying low for a few days, not taking it on the lam. I never ran away from a fight in my life. If it is a fight. That’s the hell of it, I just don’t know what it’s all about.

  “But I will,” he added grimly.

  Elise Danner said, “But the killer took out two of Piersall’s men—”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing,” Mayhew said, waving it off. “Donny’s boys come on strong. He came on stronger. That doesn’t mean he’s gunning for us. But we’re not going to sit around wondering and waiting for him to move on us.”

  Selecting a handbag with shoulder straps, she opened it and dumped the contents of her purse into it.

  Her laptop was hardened with top-level encryptors and fail-safes, but she decided to take it with her anyway. A mountain of confidential data was locked into its hard drive. Valuable information that might serve later as a bargaining chip.

  She tucked the laptop into its carrying case, slinging the strap over her shoulder. She slung the handbag over her other shoulder. Mayhew didn’t offer to help carry her overnight bag and she knew better than to ask. She grabbed the handle and picked it up. “Let’s go,” she said.

  She and Mayhew went downstairs. She reached for the front door, but Mayhew intercepted her, saying, “Wait a minute.”

  He went to one of the windows, lifting the edge of the drapes and peering outside. Piersall stood leaning against the side of the Hummer, smoking a cigarette. His sideman was still sitting in the backseat. All looked quiet and normal. The most intrusive element was Piersall. He didn’t look like he belonged in the neighborhood.

  Letting the curtain fall away from his hand, Mayhew said, “Okay.”

  Elise Danner used the indoor keypad to reset the alarm system; then she and Mayhew exited via the front door.

  Piersall took a last drag on his cigarette and flipped it away, into the street. Opening the rear hatch of the vehicle, he said, “You can stow your gear in the back. Here, let me help.”

  “Thank you,” Elise Danner said.

  “We aim to please,” he said, his smile oily, flashing a mouthful of movie-star-level dental work. She suspected his teeth were all capped and professionally whitened. When her bags were in place, he opened the right rear door for her, motioning for her to enter. Indicating his sideman, he said, “This’s Bennett.”

  Bennett nodded, saying, “Hi.”

  She said, “Hello.”

  Bennett’s overall look and well-trimmed, ginger-colored goatee gave him a raffish look, reminding her of picture book illustrations of Robin Hood. Being one of Donny Piersall’s associates, he might steal from the rich, but it was a surety that he’d never give any of it to the poor, she thought.

  She climbed into the backseat, Piersall closing the door behind her, sealing her in. One good thing about the Hummer; it was roomy, so Bennett didn’t intrude on her personal space. Not that he seemed interested in her, not like Piersall.

  Mayhew sat in front, on the passenger side. Piersall got behind the wheel, starting up the Hummer and driving away. Elise Danner wondered when and under what circumstances she would return home. She made a point of not looking back.

  Arnot’s Acres was Mayhew’s country estate, a sprawling piece of property in a woodsy area of Maryland by the bay. It had a rustic quality—rich rustic.

  Once, it had been prime farmland, hunting and fishing grounds, the private precincts of the old-time landed gentry who had carved out vast tracts for their own domains. It had been discovered and acquired by the new rich, the rising mercantile barons who wanted scenic beauty and privacy away from the big cities, but not too far away. The great estates had been acquired before they could be sold off piecemeal and subdivided into smaller lots. As a result, the county had escaped the blight of overdevelopment and still retained much of its rural charm.

  The modern-day gentry now occupying it enjoyed all the benefits of country living without the hassle of operating working farms. Most of the waterfront properties were second homes, exclusive and expensive, used for weekends and vacationing. Jealous of their secluded retreats, the new owners presented a united front against future development, thwarting the encroachments of suburban sprawl.

  Arnot’s Acres was a prime piece of property on the bay, a spacious clearing of rolling hills and fields and meadows carved out of the woodlands.

  Arnot himself had been a pre-Revolutionary landowner who’d first used the locale for an extensive and lucrative smuggling ring, buying and selling all sorts of contraband luxury goods—wines, brandies, rum, fine silks, and such—evading the King’s crippling import duties and excise taxes. The trade had done well by Arnot, allowing him to amass a fortune and establish himself as a rich and respected country squire. A real Tory, loyal to King and Crown.

  Came the Revolution, and Arnot’s backing the wrong horse caused him to lose all and vanish into obscurity, leaving only his name to mark the site of his onetime domain. Now, centuries later, the proud owner of the property was Greg Mayhew.

  Its centerpiece was a modern-day manor house, a multistory mansion set on a rise overlooking the water. Its rich, silver-gray wooden exterior harmonized with the natural beauty of the surroundings, the bay, fields, and sky. Grouped around it were several smaller outbuildings, among them a barn converted into a multi-vehicle garage, a toolshed, and a kennel for Mayhew’s guard dogs.

  Jutting out from the shoreline at right angles, a sixty-foot-long wooden pier thrust out into a cove of the bay, a sheltered natural harbor. Moored alongside the pier was a handsome cabin cruiser, sleek and streamlined, built for speed and power.

  Mayhew’s property had neighbors to the right and left; their houses could be seen, distantly, but they were well out of shouting distance. The mansion was set back an eighth of a mile from the main road, a stretch of two-lane blacktop running parallel to the waterfront.

  A gravel road connected the mansion to the strip of farm highway. A shoulder-high white wooden rail fence marked the edge of Mayhew’s land; set in it was a triple-barred white metal gate that barred access to the gravel road.

  Night fell heavily here. Darkness was omnipresent, lights were few and far between. The manor house and its outbuildings made a patchy yellow glow on the body of the land and the water’s edge.

  In the main house, on the second floor, Elise Danner occupied a guest room that had been reserved for her use. Suite of rooms really. There was what could be called a drawing room, a bedroom, and a private bathroom. She was in the bedroom, the room that put the most distance between her and the other occupants of the house.

  Like the rest of the mansion, her suite was comfortable, well appointed, and furnished with all the impersonality of a hotel room.

  What it was, was a cell.

  She was under no illusions on that score. She was under confinement. She had the free run of the house, but that was all.

  One thing she knew for certain: Durwood Quentin III was dead. That she knew because she’d seen it on the big flat-screen TV that was part of her suite. It had earned almost sixty seconds coverage on the national network news; no mean feat, considering how little program time was devoted to hard news as opposed to pop culture pap and personality filler. The local news broadcasts had given it a much bigger play. The story was tailor-made for the tube. It had all the elements: politics, big money, sex, and violence. They were treating it as an open-and-shut case. Rich guy kills street hooker and himself.

  Whatever the truth about Quentin’s demise, it had taken more than that to sting Mayhew into taking cover at Arnot’s Acres. And he had made sure that she, Elise Danner, was right there with him. He wasn’t leaving her free and at large, and it wasn’t because he was worried about her safety. She knew him too well for that. He’d had her picked up because he was worried about his own safety, about what she could tell about the inner workings of ISS if somebody grabbed her and put the squeeze on her.

  It wasn�
�t the feds that had thrown a jolt into him either. That was apparent from the way he’d been handling himself since arriving at the estate. Not just because he had Donny Piersall’s heavily armed goon squad patrolling the premises, though that was alarming enough in itself.

  No, it was in the details. On arrival, he’d ordered his caretakers to close the curtains on all the windows throughout the house. Because of concern that somebody outside might be spying on him? Or because he feared that somebody might take a shot at him when he was outlined behind a clear glass pane?

  She’d always found the main house chilly and unwelcoming at best; it was too much structure for too few occupants, grandiose and barnlike, its oversized rooms and high-ceilinged halls dwarfing the individual. The best thing about it was the vistas of countryside and bay visible from the windows. With the curtained windows blocking out the views, the house felt more opressive than ever.

  Mayhew was being careful to stay inside, and had told her to do the same, for her own safety. Not that she had any inclination to go wandering about out of doors, with the chance of a run-in with the caretakers and their guard dogs, or Piersall and any of his people. He was bad enough, but his crew seemed a whole lot worse. They were a piratical-looking bunch, and seeing them reminded her that real, historical pirates weren’t picturesque characters with eye patches and colorful parrots perched on their shoulders, stumping around on peg legs and going on about fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. The genuine article were black-hearted brigands who thrived on rapine and brutality and would cut your throat for a doubloon or just for the fun of it. No, she’d hate to be cornered by some of Donny’s people if she were alone and out of sight of any other witnesses.

  “Don’t go taking any strolls,” Mayhew had told her. “You make a better target out in the open.”

  Target? Who’d want to shoot her? Not the FBI or any other DOJ investigatory agency she’d ever heard of, and she thought she knew them all, from her own years as a CIA analyst. She had no idea that presently she was about to be disabused of that notion…

  There were more than a few ISS clients, active and former, who might fit the bill. Inside intelligence about the workings of Washington was a lucrative commodity, and ISS had been none too fastidious about whom it sold its wares to. Some were Very Bad People indeed, representing countries where torture and murder were standard operating procedure.

  Elise Danner had never seriously considered the possibility of blowback from one of their transactions personally affecting her. Now, though, she could think of nothing else.

  Not just exterior threats menaced her. Behind these walls lay the most dangerous potential threat of all: Greg Mayhew himself.

  Should he think that she might somehow be detrimental to his interests, he’d eliminate her without so much as a second thought or an iota of regret. Again and again, her anxieties fastened on a realization that had struck her almost immediately on arrival today at the Acres: It was a nice spot for a murder.

  And with all that wide expanse of bay right at hand, ideal for disposing of a body. Mayhew’s boat was moored right at the pier…

  Elise Danner now knew the meaning of fear. It was a physical thing, a bodily reaction. Nerves stretched to piano-wire tautness. Constant churning in her guts, like she wanted to throw up. The feeling of being about to jump out of one’s skin, like she was going to snap under the pressure and lose it, going out of her head.

  And she dare not show it. Any sign, any hint that she might be a weak link could be the deciding factor in provoking Mayhew to get rid of her.

  This was fear. Or so she thought.

  But in the words of the old saying, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  SIX

  Moochie had what he considered the best post: gate guard. He was placed way to hell and gone from everybody else, stationed at the estate’s front gate, while everybody else was back at the house. He was supposed to keep watch for suspicious activity on the main road and patrol along the fenced-in landward perimeter of the property.

  Suspicious activity? That was a laugh. He’d been out here for almost four hours now, since ten P.M., and the only activity he’d seen was three vehicles going by. That, and a possum crossing the road.

  The vehicles had been a car, a pickup truck, and a minivan, and they’d all appeared during the first hour of his post. The minivan had been the first, rolling along the eastbound lane of the two-lane blacktop. Doing about thirty miles an hour, neither slowing down nor speeding up, just going on its way. The lone driver was a woman, but he couldn’t see her well enough to tell if she were young or old, good-looking or homely.

  There were no street lamps on this stretch of road; the only light nearby came from a floodlight mounted on a metal pole to one side of the triple-barred gate, illuminating it. The gate was closed and locked. The lock was one of those electromechanical devices. It had a built-in sensor that responded to a preset frequency from a keying device. Mayhew and the caretakers each had one of the handheld devices allowing them to come and go as they pleased. The mechanism could also be unlocked by a key signal from the house. Visitors had to park outside the gate, get out of their vehicles, and speak into a device that looked like a parking meter but was actually an intercom connecting with the house. They’d have to state their name and business; if they passed muster, a remote would unlock and open the gate, which would automatically close and relock once they’d entered.

  Moochie was inside the fence, on foot, and not equipped with one of keying devices. He was equipped with a hunting rifle, a pistol, and a flashlight; also, with a cell phone, which was one of a bunch of cells that Piersall had supplied his crew with. They were to be used for this one job, and when it was done, they would be collected and disposed of.

  Moochie, twenty-five, was the youngest member of the crew. He had a rooster’s comb of stiff, oily black hair and a long, thin, bony face. He was skinny, with pipe-stem limbs, partly by nature and partly because he was a meth tweaker.

  A city boy, slum-born and bred, he had a total lack of inhibition about the infliction of violence, which had resulted in a successful criminal career, culminating with recruitment into Piersall’s crew. He was urban to the core, and country living held no charms for him. This back-to-nature bit, he felt, was strictly for the birds. He’d go nuts if he actually had to live out here in the middle of nowhere.

  The floodlit gate was a zone of light, and he generally stuck close to it for most of his stretch of guard duty. A half-moon hung high in a sky mottled by thin, drifting clouds. Moonlight picked out the long, rolling fields stretching toward the house and the ribbon of the blacktop road.

  He toted a hunting rifle. He was no hunter, at least not of the field-and-stream variety, but he had a facility with rifles. His weapon of choice was the handgun, and he had one tucked into a hip pocket of the baggy, cargo-pocketed pants he was wearing.

  Twenty minutes after the minivan passed, a pickup truck drove by going westbound. The general darkness allowed Moochie to see the vehicle’s lights coming from a long way off. It drew abreast of the gate. The driver’s-side window was open. The driver was a fat-faced old guy wearing a soft fisherman’s hat. He kept right on going. Moochie stood watching for a long time as the pickup’s lights dwindled, winking out in the distance. There wasn’t much else to do out here.

  Around midnight, the sound of a powerful engine winding out somewhere in the distance made him pick up his ears. A car approached from the west, zooming along the straightaway. Man, it was moving, really moving!

  For an instant, he thought maybe this was it, action was breaking. He trembled with eagerness, holding the rifle waist-high in both hands.

  A car flashed past, a muscle car, a convertible with the top down. It must have been doing seventy, seventy-five miles per hour. A glimpse of the occupants: A guy was driving and a girl sat in the front seat with him, her long hair streaming behind her like the tail of a comet. A big-ass sound system was cranked up lou
d, blaring some heavy metal music that competed with the engine’s roar.

  Then it was gone, rocketing down the road and away.

  False alarm. What a letdown, Moochie thought. Still, there went one dude who knew what it was all about. No wonder he was going so fast. He was probably racing to get the hell out of these boondocks. And into that bitch’s pants.

  That happened around midnight. After that, nothing. Not another vehicle came along. Time dragged by. Moochie thought he’d go out of his mind with boredom. Every fifteen minutes or so, he was supposed to phone the house to report in. Mace was handling the calls at that end, like a dispatcher. Other crew members also reported in regularly on their patrol routines.

  Tyrone was covering the pier and the cove. The caretakers, Jimmy Mac and Karl, made the rounds circling the house and outbuildings. They were Mayhew’s people and they were more than just caretakers. They looked like they could handle themselves pretty good. They wouldn’t be working for Mayhew if they couldn’t. They both went around armed. Piersall had passed the word to his crew not to give either of them any crap.

  Jimmy Mac was the dog handler. He made the rounds with a pair of leashed Rottweilers. Moochie wouldn’t want to be around if they ever got unleashed. They were big, mean-looking brutes. They didn’t bark much when left to themselves in the kennel, and never made a sound when Jimmy Mac was around. They just stood there glaring with eyes like reddish-brown marbles and breathed hard. Not panting, but just breathing hard, like they were just itching to slip their leashes and get at you and start tearing. They ever came at Moochie, he wouldn’t waste any time wondering what to do, he’d blow them away. This he’d decided. Let Donny square things with Mayhew afterward. Karl was the other caretaker, a big shambling hayseed-looking guy who didn’t say much. He made the rounds with Jimmy Mac. When it came time to report in, Karl did the talking.