The Shadow Priest

by D. C. Alexander

  A welcome distraction came when Pratt's son picked up a rock and threw it an impressive distance out into the yard.

  "Did you see that?" Pratt said. He smiled, picked his boy up and gave him a squeeze and a kiss on the head. "My boy. He's gonna be the next Ty Detmer."

  "Kid's got a gun," Morrison said.

  "Hey, you guys want to see him laugh like crazy?"

  "Sure."

  "Here, stand here and here," he said, directing Arkin and Morrison to points of a triangle roughly five feet on each side. "Now catch," he said, tossing his son, front first, to a startled Morrison. As soon as Morrison caught him, Jake burst out laughing. The unrestrained, mirthful laugh of a blissfully happy child.

  "Holy shit, Pratt."

  "Don't be teaching my boy cuss words. Here, give him a toss to Arkin."

  Morrison, looking unsure, tossed Jake to Arkin, and the boy burst into laughter again. It was infectious. They went around the triangle with him for several minutes, the boy laughing hysterically. At one point, Ella saw them out the kitchen window, opened it and called out, "John Pratt, you be careful with that son of yours." Arkin felt a warmth in his chest and realized he was smiling.

  *****

  On their way home after the party, Arkin and Hannah stopped at Trimble Hot Springs to unwind. They sat in an open-air pool, gazing up at bright stars in the crystal clear autumn night sky. They had the pool to themselves for the moment.

  "So it really is the Priest?" Hannah asked.

  "Probably." Arkin sounded grave. Resigned.

  "Unbelievable. Think about the odds of encountering this again."

  "I know."

  "You don't have to get involved."

  "I know."

  "You can just tell John what you know. Give him a little direction. Then leave it to him. Your jurisdiction is peripheral anyway, right? Limited to the weapons stuff?"

  "I know."

  "But you're tempted. Don't say 'I know.'"

  "It's just floating around out there, unresolved. I wish Roland were here. I wonder if he would let it go or go after it."

  "Nate, I need you here with me."

  "I know you do. I'm not going anywhere. If someone has to travel, it will be Pratt. Believe me, I wouldn't leave you right now if they put a gun to my head."

  She didn't seem to hear him. "I don't want you off chasing down leads from here to Zanzibar. And I don't want your mind running off to Zanzibar even when I have you here in body, alright? I need the whole you."

  "Understood.'

  "Anyway, even if one day you break the case, what does that get you? Peace of mind? A sense of vindication over the whole DCI debacle? Closure?" She turned to face him. "Is it going to fill the void for you? You know the answer to that as well as I do." She gathered up and held his hands in hers and looked him square in the eyes. "Let it go."

  Arkin stayed quiet. But even in the dim starlight, Hannah could see the heartbreak in his face.

  "Nate."

  "I know. It just—dealing with it brings back a lot. Dark memories."

  "Exactly. And you think catching the Priest will help you bury them?"

  "Maybe."

  "What if you don't catch him?"

  Arkin shrugged.

  "Nate, the more distance you've managed to put between yourself and what happened with DCI, the happier you've been. The happier we've both been. And even if you catch your Priest, it isn't going to fix the past. It isn't going to bring Roland back. It isn't going to put you back where you were in D.C. It isn't going to undo any of what happened."

  "Yeah," he said, sounding dubious.

  "It was years ago. We're happy here. Happy for having given up the race. Happier than we ever were in D.C., and you know it."

  "But what happened to me—"

  "No, no. Sometimes things just happen in life. Sometimes it's just a matter of luck. Random accident. Like this cancer."

  Arkin closed his eyes and frowned. "Can we please not talk about that right now?"

  "Do you think if you could go back in time and make me eat more leafy greens that this wouldn't have happened?"

  "Please, let's not—"

  "Nate, come here."

  "Where."

  "Come float on your back right in front of me here."

  He took a deep breath, spread his arms and legs, arched his torso up to the surface and did his best to float on the hot, steaming water, staring straight up at the starry sky. Hannah moved to support him with her arms, and turned so that her face hovered nearly over his.

  "I'm sinking."

  "You're not sinking. You're floating. I'm holding you. We're going to perform a little ritual here."

  "What?"

  "Take a deep breath. As deep as you can."

  He complied.

  "Now hold it, hold it, hold it. Now let it out, slowly, through your nose."

  She had him repeat the cycle seven times. Each time he exhaled, she described how the stress was being pushed further and further out from the center of his chest, until it moved down his limbs and eventually out his fingers and toes. As she did so, he pictured a glowing red line, marking the edge of tension, moving further and further out toward the ends of his appendages. He swore he could actually feel the stress leaving his body.

  "Are you relaxed?" she asked at last.

  "Yes." All he saw above him was the brilliant night sky and his wife's dimly lit face hovering on the edge of his field of vision.

  "I want you to repeat after me, I'm going to let go."

  "I'm going to let go."

  "I'm not going to get involved, and I'm going to be okay."

  "This is silly."

  "Nathaniel."

  "I'm not going to get involved."

  "And you're going to be okay."

  He paused. "And I'm going to be okay."

  As he said this, Hannah removed her arms from under his back and eased away. He floated free, seemingly in space, totally relaxed. But without her support, as he let out the deep breath he was holding, he began to sink, so he jerked an arm back to support himself, to keep his head from going under.

  THIRTEEN

  "I got the data from our second subpoena," Pratt said as he strolled in through Arkin's open office door.

  "Are the account holders located in Wyoming?"

  Pratt stood dumb for a moment. "How—" He shook his head. "Yes. They are both Wyoming LLCs. One called V-TAC, one called Star Dynamics. I did some quick poking around on Lexis-Nexis and so forth, and it looks like both companies only exist on paper. No places of business. No contact information. No advertising. Nothing. Straw companies that don't appear to engage in any sort of business aside from being holders of our two suspect credit card accounts."

  "Just like Beartooth Expeditors."

  "Who?"

  "I'll tell you later."

  "Why Wyoming?"

  "Wyoming doesn't require that you disclose the names of LLC owners or managers in the articles of organization or annual reports that have to be filed with the secretary of state. The only information available to the general public, and to databases like Lexis-Nexis, is the name of the agent for service of process."

  "A dead end then?"

  "We should still get the state records. Each LLC has to file an annual report each year. Maybe between the annual reports and the original articles of organization, we'll find that somebody screwed up and left some information in there we can exploit. A name. An address or phone number. A postmark. Anything."

  "So are we taking a road trip to Wyoming?"

  "Just send them a subpoena. It'll take a few more days, but it sure as hell beats a visit to Cheyenne."

  "I like Cheyenne."

  "Of course you do. Anyway, while you're at it, subpoena security camera footage for the gas stations, motels, and anywhere else those cards were used. If there was any, it's probably gone by now—the digital memory overwritten by more recent recordings—but it's worth a shot. And there's always a chance they started using the
cards again. Might be worth subpoenaing more recent transaction data." Pratt stared at him, as if debating whether to speak. "What is it?"

  "You sure like subpoenas."

  "Hey, I'd interview a witness if we had one." Now Pratt looked downright glum. "John, you would have loved my last job. There was almost no paperwork, and you got into gunfights and high-speed car chases almost every week."

  "Really?"

  "No."

  Pratt grinned.

  Arkin looked out his window. "John, listen. I'll set you on your course here, but I really can't be involved in this one."

  Pratt looked puzzled. "What are you talking about? This is your case. Your baby from back in the day."

  "My jurisdiction ends with identification of the weapon and bullet."

  "All that means is you aren't the primary. It doesn't mean you can't be involved."

  "There's more to it than that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's hard to explain. This was the last case I ever worked for DCI. I'm not—I just need to stay on the sidelines for this one. You know what you're doing. You have the whole agency to back you up. I need to step away, alright?"

  Pratt looked like a kid who just found out there was no Santa Claus. "If you say so."

  "I'm sorry. Look, just subpoena the Wyoming Secretary of State's office for the articles of organization, annual reports, and whatever else they have on record for those two companies. Find out who owns them, then follow the trail on up the chain as far as you can go."

  "Okay."

  "Have you read through the hard copy of the file you got from headquarters?"

  "I haven't got it yet."

  "When did you send the request?"

  "Oh, I guess last Tuesday."

  "Eight days ago?" That was typical, Arkin thought. Whether it reflected conscious or subconscious decisions, records requests from field offices always seemed to be treated with lower priority than requests that came from within headquarters. "Is Mike Chase still running Central Records?"

  "He is."

  "You should give him a call to follow up."

  "I called him two days ago."

  "So why is it taking so long?"

  "I don't know. He was kind of weird about it. Said he was really busy."

  Shit. "Alright, I'll give him a call too. See if we can't light a fire under his lazy headquarters ass."

  "Thanks."

  *****

  After calling and prodding his old drinking buddy, Mike Chase, on Pratt's behalf—only to learn from an embarrassed and awkward-sounding Chase that he hadn't even put the Priest file in the mail yet—Arkin spent the rest of his day focused on other cases, typing up a report of an interview from some two-week-old notes and organizing grand jury material for a Ute man who'd been caught with a fully automatic FN-FAL rifle on the back seat of his car during a traffic stop near Chama, New Mexico. He spent his lunch break beating, in only nine moves, a mid-ranking online chess player from Montreal. It was Hannah's yoga night, so he asked Pratt and Morrison to join him for dinner at the Ore House, and, feeling he needed a little fresh air, walked the half mile along the Animas River to downtown. As he was walking along Main Avenue a few minutes later, just a block from the Ore House, he approached a parked car with heavily tinted windows. A full-sized sedan, maroon in color. What caught his eye was the extra antenna stuck to the trunk with a magnetized base. It was of a sort often used by law enforcement officers when they didn't want to draw attention to themselves, like on unmarked patrol cars being used in speed traps, on surveillance vehicles, et cetera. But Arkin didn't recognize the car as one used by any of the locals he knew. The car appeared to be occupied. As he passed, he thought he could see the shape of a hand-held Motorola radio—another favorite tool of surveillance teams—sitting on the passenger seat. But he couldn't be sure given the dark tinting of the windows. He wondered if somebody might be in town running an operation.

  The restaurant was dimly lit and smelled of baking potatoes and beef being grilled over open flame.

  "Grape soda?" Morrison asked Pratt.

  "Water, asshole."

  "Wine?" Morrison asked Arkin.

  "Of course."

  "Perhaps you should—"

  "Yes," Arkin said, reaching for the wine list. "Ah! This is a surprise. They have a four-year-old Tempranillo-Monastrell blend from a very reliable bodega of the Rioja Alavesa."

  "The what?"

  "A Spanish AVA with a terroir that lends a—"

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute," Morrison said, holding up both hands, palms facing Arkin. "Are you fucking kidding me? 'Terroir?' Let me ask you something—did they beat your ass down at Camp Pendleton when you used words like that?"

  Arkin eyeballed him, paused. "It goes well with meat."

  "Okay then."

  Arkin unfolded his napkin and spread it out on his lap. "Hey, have either of you been told about anyone running an op in town?"

  "What sort of op?" Morrison asked.

  "Any sort. I think I spotted a surveillance-fitted car about a block up Main."

  "The maroon Impala?"

  "Yes."

  "I saw that too. But I haven't heard anything about anyone running an op."

  "Some joker from Albuquerque taking his G-ride on vacation, I shouldn't wonder," Arkin said.

  "But did you see the radio sitting on his passenger seat?"

  "I did."

  "So he probably isn't alone."

  "Maybe I'll call around tomorrow. Inquire with the locals. See if anyone has declared."

  They were soon devouring their steaks—rib-eyes for Morrison and Pratt, Arkin opting for an eleven-ounce filet topped with the Ore House's spin on au poivre—all of them medium-rare.

  "So you never finished your story from our drive home from Cortez," Pratt said to Arkin.

  "What story?"

  "About what happened at DCI. I mean, you know, why you quit."

  "Damnation, Pratt," Morrison said. "Do you really think the man wants to talk about that kind of shit over dinner?"

  Pratt flushed. "Oh."

  But Arkin was feeling unfettered by the half bottle of Spanish wine already in his belly. "No, to hell with it. I'll tell you what happened."

  Pratt shook off his embarrassment. "I was just wondering. You said it was because of politics. Politics and a failure of character."

  Arkin took a deep breath, then a big pull from his glass of wine. He set his glass down on the table and gazed at it. "About the time I started making some real progress in the Priest case, I was unexpectedly TDY'd to Indonesia to help with consular security in the aftermath of a big earthquake there. Nothing to do with counter-terrorism. They just needed as many agents with security and PSO training down there as they could get, to protect our assets, escort diplomatic personnel, and so forth. There was all sorts of rioting and looting taking place in the post-quake disorder. I was assigned to a four-person team tasked with essentially chauffeuring the family of the chargé d'affaires. For reasons that were never made entirely clear to me, I was made subordinate to a DCI agent who had a bad reputation for being incompetent. Matter of fact, Tom Killick, who is now your director of operations, was the coworker who warned me about this guy, telling me about a case he'd worked with him in which he'd done a number of unethical things trying to cover his own ass when he messed it up."

  "You know Killick too?" Pratt asked.

  "We're old friends, of sorts. Go way back. We were in training together at FLETC, Fort Belvoir, and other places that shall remain nameless. Ran a lot of cases together."

  "You know everybody."

  "Anyway, Killick really should have reported the ethical problems of this agent he was warning me about. He didn't. But that's another story." Arkin waved at the air in front of his face as if clearing away smoke. "The point is that this rotten egg of an agent was our team leader for two weeks in Indonesia. Things went badly from the start. It was obvious he didn't know what he was doing. He'd screw up basic things l
ike route planning and end up leading motorcades into narrow, dead-end streets. One time he actually radioed a command for a motorcade to depart a dental clinic before the chargé's wife had even gotten in the car, leaving her and me standing on an exposed street corner like a couple of target dummies. On top of that, there were the ethical issues. For example, on our second day in-country, he ordered one of the guys on our team into a hot riot zone to find him—I shit you not—a Starbucks latte. Another time, claiming he had to follow up on a lead concerning the burglary of a State Department employee's house, he took a consulate vehicle on an 80 mile trip to a tropical beach resort, leaving the rest of us high and dry for three days."

  "You're kidding," Pratt said.

  "True stories. But the thing that took the cake was what he did with my laptop computer."

  "Which was what?"

  "He claimed he left his at home because its hard drive crashed. So he asks to borrow mine. Fine, I say, just don't take it outside the consulate because it has sensitive national security information on it, right? Standard procedure. So what happens? First thing I find out after borrowing it back for an hour is that he has been using it to log onto NCIC. No big deal, right? Except that he told another woman on our team that he was querying NCIC to check the backgrounds of a couple of women he met through an online dating service. I don't say anything because I'm not sure how to approach it yet in light of the chain of command issue. I just figure I'll resist letting him borrow it again. When he eventually did ask, I made up some bullshit about the hard drive acting up. But he said he'd deal with it, and ordered me to let him use it. Exactly what happened next remains a mystery, but that same day, while he's out on the town doing heaven knows what, he probably left it in his car or on a table somewhere and it got stolen. On the hard drive were files containing documentation on our order of battle in a couple of ongoing investigations, lists of suspects, even the dossier of a confidential informant.

  "Holy shit," Morrison nearly shouted.

  "Quite. But does he fess up to having lost it so that CI-IS can deal with the security breach? No, sir. When I told him I needed it back to draft my daily report, he feigned ignorance, claiming he hadn't borrowed it after all, but left it on my makeshift desk in our little command center." Arkin shook his head. "A lie. I watched him take it. Unhappily for me, there were no other witnesses."