by P. L. Gaus
“This time I’ll need to know what you’re doing here, Professor,” Niell said officially.
Branden briefly considered giving Niell an evasive answer but gauged it was time to start figuring David Hawkins on terms Cal Troyer was incapable of accepting. However reasonable his conviction that Hawkins had not murdered Eric Bromfield, there was still the matter of Jesse Sands and Hawkins’s revenge. Whatever game Bruce Robertson was playing, it was clear the sheriff still intended for him and Cal to keep looking for Hawkins too. Branden had no intentions, now, of falling off the Hawkins trail. He had come here to check on one of Caroline’s hunches. And now he knew it was true. David Hawkins had taken possession of both his rifle and his ammunition, and that struck Branden as the pivotal fact in the case so far.
He turned, unlocked the side door, and led Niell, without comment, into the basement. As he worked the hidden switch to throw the bolts on the inside of the door to the back room, Niell seemed unsurprised.
When Branden let Niell into the room, Niell drew in a startled breath and turned slowly in place. Once his surprise ebbed he said, “We knew that Hawkins was in a Special Forces Unit, but this is something else altogether.”
Branden appreciated Niell’s dismay. He let a moment pass and quietly asked, “Do you know what Hawkins did, specifically?”
“Sniper,” Niell said, sounding chilled.
Branden smiled weakly and shook his head, acknowledging that Robertson would have checked. He took a seat on a tall wooden stool next to the workbench, and then glanced at the door and decided not to mention the missing rifle.
“We figured it’d be too much,” Niell said, “for Hawkins to have given up all of his firearms entirely.”
“From what Cal says, Ricky, that’s pretty much what he intends to do. Sell off his collection and make the change.”
“Go Amish, you mean?” Ricky asked.
Branden nodded.
“Then you don’t believe Hawkins killed Bromfield?” Ricky asked.
“Cal doesn’t. I’m not so sure anymore.”
“And Sands? Do you figure he’ll try for Sands?” Niell asked.
“From what I’ve seen here, yes,” Branden said. “Do you know why Hawkins taped that note to Sands’s jail cell window?”
“Robertson thinks he was playing with Sands. Messing with his head,” Niell said. His expression said he didn’t totally agree with the sheriff.
Outside as they locked up, Niell said, “Robertson knows that Eric Bromfield had learned something in New Jersey. Something Bromfield never got to tell Marty Holcombe. Robertson made some phone calls to the prison where Sands did his time. We know that’s where Bromfield went. At least it’s one of the places Bromfield went. But Robertson didn’t get any help from the warden. And he’s not planning to follow up.”
Branden mulled that over for a moment and asked, “Do you know why not?”
“The sheriff thinks that by Friday next week, we’ll all have heard more than we’re likely to want from David Hawkins. Robertson’s decided to wait him out.”
Branden stood in a narrow strip of shade beside the white house and thought. It wouldn’t be Robertson’s way to just sit around and “wait him out.” Not unless he had decided that searching further for David Hawkins would be entirely futile. Not unless Robertson had decided, based on what he had discovered, that David Hawkins would never be found until David Hawkins himself decided to permit it.
“Is Bruce down at the jail?” Branden asked.
Niell shook his head and said, “Columbus. He’s got a Buck-eye Sheriff’s Association Meeting, until tomorrow.”
“Who’s on duty tonight at the jail?”
“I am,” Ricky said. “Me and Phil Schrauzer.”
“Ricky, I need to talk with Jesse Sands.”
Niell shook his head, smiled, and said, “And what makes you think I’m gonna allow that to happen again?”
Branden pulled himself into the cab of his truck, shut the door, rolled down the window, looked at Niell, and said, “Because, Deputy, you’re like me. You figure the truth is somewhere between Cal Troyer and Bruce Robertson. That’s why you told me about New Jersey just now.”
19
Wednesday, June 11 12:30 P.M.
HE lingered in the upstairs closet for an hour, after Branden and Niell had left. That had been the prudent thing to do, considering that Branden was the only person who might figure it out in time. There was no point tipping his hand to the one man who could surely stop him.
If necessary, he’d have waited in that closet until midnight. He had come too far. He had waited too long. He knew the true nature of justice, and he intended to have it on his terms, not theirs. He’d never again accept the pathetic, so-called justice of a nation of cowards, weaklings, and traitors.
His right hand still held the grip of his .45 automatic, but the bulk of its lovely, reassuring weight was taken by the shoulder holster. It was a stainless steel Smith and Wesson model 645, better, he thought, than the third-generation 4506. He would never risk it here, but the temptation to take it out had been profound, an almost irresistible impulse to work a few rounds through the chamber. The slide was honed to whisper smoothness, and the trigger was satin. If only he could palm the rounds, he had thought, maybe a few dry snaps of the hammer would calm him.
The new silencer for the Browning Buckmark was parked in its black leather sleeve, strapped to his thigh with Velcro ties. The sleeve was made of good leather, from a batch he had saved from his days as a Boy Scout. Easy to strap it in place with the Velcro, just below the slit in his front pants pocket. It rode there on his thigh, safely out of view, ever ready. Too bad, really, to have lost the Ruger .22. It was just too wonderfully accurate. The silencer was mated to it as if it were an integral part of the barrel. It released little more than a whisper. The Ruger always performed. It had never jammed. He knew it’d print on a target inside a half-inch circle at 25 yards.
But the Browning seemed better, now, lighter. The Ruger had always stabbed its metallic weight into his kidneys. The target barrel was heavy, and the slide knurls annoyed the skin at his lower back. Why hadn’t he used the Browning before? So much lighter; so much more comfortable.
Earlier, when those two had been in the basement, he had brought out the Browning and its silencer. The rush had been nearly overpowering as he had screwed the two together. He had slipped the safety off, and had moved into place on the landing at the top of the basement stairs.
It would have been so easy at the top of the steps. Just wait for them on the landing, and then be rid of them both. If either of them moved after he had dropped them, then two more rounds into the back of the skull. No noise, little blood, and Millersburg would have two more murders that the Sheriff would never understand. What a joke. Robertson still hadn’t comprehended the murder of the reporter.
Moving out of the closet, however, had been a colossal mistake. He admitted that to himself, now. Better think about that later, he whispered in the dark. Another poor decision. One more could ruin him.
Don’t kid yourself, he thought morosely. You’re losing the touch. Ten years ago, such a blunder would have been unthinkable.
20
Wednesday, June 11 9:00 P.M.
JESSE Sands lay on a cot in his isolated, second-floor cell and scornfully blew smoke toward the ceiling. His fingers were clasped behind his head, elbows up, his cigarette hanging loose at his lips. The sleeves of his orange inmate’s pullover were rolled up tight onto the rounds of his shoulders. The tattoos on his biceps looked faded in the dim, smoky light of his cell.
Inside the cell, Sands’s public defender lawyer, Jack Crawford, sat on a straight chair with his briefcase open on his knees. Branden and Niell stood on the other side of the bars.
“I have advised my client,” Crawford said, “to say nothing to either of you.”
“You’re wasting your time, Crawford,” Niell said.
“You’re due in court, Niell,” Crawford said. �
�Violating my client’s civil rights the last time you brought someone here to talk to Mr. Sands.”
Niell scoffed. “What’s the difference to you, Sands?” Niell said. “We’re going to tie you up with at least three murders, anyway. Next week only counts for Janet Hawkins.”
“You don’t have to say anything, Jesse,” Crawford said.
“Well, Deputy,” Sands said, mocking a country accent. “I just don’t know what I’m gonna tell you. Don’t have nothing to say, and that’s pretty much all she wrote.” He sat up on the edge of his cot, crushed the cigarette on the floor, picked up the butt, and flipped it insolently at Niell.
Branden turned, walked back into the upstairs hallway, and took a wooden chair back into the cellblock. He put it down gently in front of Sands’s cell and sat down next to Niell, who still stood in front of the bars. Then the professor stretched his legs out beside the bars as if he had nothing better to do on a lazy spring night. He sat there for nearly twenty minutes without speaking. Sands lay on his cot, smoking. Niell pulled the door open on the vacant cell across from Sands and sat down on the cot, legs hanging over, back propped against the bars. Sands stepped to his toilet, relieved himself, and sat back on his bed.
“They say you robbed that kid in the buggy the night you came into Millersburg,” Branden said.
“You’re a fool, Professor,” Sands said. “Go home.”
“You held a gun to the head of the most peaceful soul on earth, and you think me a fool?” Branden ridiculed.
“You’re a fool and so was he.”
“The sheriff thinks one of those Amish ‘fools’ is getting ready to kill you, Sands,” Branden said.
Sands scoffed and said, “Right.”
“What if he’s right?” Branden asked.
“He’s not,” Sands said with confidence and composure.
“Then tell me why he’s not,” Branden said without looking into Sands’s cell.
“You don’t get it and neither does the Fat Man,” Sands said, bored now with the matter. “Get out. I’m sleepy.”
“I can walk out of here any time I choose,” Branden said.
“Get out, you bore me,” Sands said and stretched on his cot.
“Why did you kill her, Sands?”
“She was there.”
“Shut up, Sands,” Crawford snapped.
Sands gave him the finger.
“Why Millersburg?” Branden asked.
“It was on my way.”
“Why’s he after you?”
“He has always . . . ” Sands stopped abruptly and cursed himself under his breath.
“Who has?” Branden asked.
Sands kept quiet. Niell listened intently from across the aisle, but, beyond breathing normally, he moved not so much as a fraction of an inch.
“Who has what?” Branden asked.
Sands glared at the ceiling.
“He has always what?”
Sands rolled over and closed his eyes.
“What has he always done, and who is it that has always done it, Sands?” Branden asked and then sat quietly for another few minutes.
Eventually, on impulse, Branden asked the principal question again. “What did you tell David Hawkins the night he came here as an Amishman to forgive you for killing his daughter?”
“Again,” Crawford said, shaking his head, “I advise you to say nothing, Mr. Sands.”
But Sands answered anyway, taunting Branden. “I told him that I pulled the trigger, but I wasn’t the one who actually killed his daughter.”
21
Friday, June 13 7:00 A.M.
AS soon as Robertson was due back in town, Branden arrived at the jail and waited for Robertson in the sheriff’s corner office. Ellie Troyer let him in with her keys and went back out to her counter to make a pot of coffee. While the night dispatcher finished his shift, Ellie sat with Branden and waited. Branden could tell from her questions that Ricky Niell had kept her well informed on matters of Jesse Sands.
“Do you have it figured out, what Sands meant by saying ‘He has always . . .’?” Ellie asked the professor over her first mug of coffee. She was parked in the sheriff’s big desk chair.
“No, does Niell?” Branden asked and smiled at her near-Mennonite transparency. At the way she had plainly and simply come straight to the point.
Ellie Troyer liked working on what she called the “good side” of people. She especially liked anyone who would stand up to Bruce Robertson, and these days, that most particularly included Professor Branden, and Ricky Niell. And if she could manage it, she planned that things would fall out on her shift, to Niell’s benefit. And so today, she pushed a little harder on the professor as he slouched in the leather chair beside Robertson’s cherry desk.
His back was low on the cushion. His legs stuck out straight, ankles crossed. His elbows were perched on the armrests, and his hands were folded in his lap. His wavy brown hair was combed neatly into place. His beard was trimmed close. Ellie studied him a moment longer, shuffled Robertson’s stack of mail around on the sheriff’s desk, and then continued.
“Ricky hasn’t figured what it means, either,” she said, and swung the chair to the side. She got up and walked over to gaze at the arm patches on Robertson’s wall.
Branden asked, “Do you think Sands actually meant he did not kill Janet Hawkins?”
Ellie was dressed in a long, light green dress, with a high white collar. Her hair was tied in a bun, not so much as a matter of style, but because she had been out late with Ricky Niell, and there hadn’t been time to attend to it. Her reading glasses hung from a lanyard around her neck. Her shoes were simple black loafers. All in all, she could have added a prayer bonnet and almost fooled a tourist out on the square into thinking she was surely Amish. Maybe Mennonite, or something like that. Few tourists ever bothered to learn the difference. Branden pulled himself up a bit in his chair and waited for Ellie to give her answer.
“He probably meant that there is something about that murder that nobody has figured out yet,” Ellie said.
Branden quietly nodded his agreement.
Ellie sat back down in Robertson’s chair and finished the last sip of her coffee. Before she could get up, they heard Robertson’s voice out in the hall. Ellie got herself out of the chair quickly, pushed it back up under the desk, winked at Branden, and rushed to the credenza where Robertson’s coffeepot was kept. As Robertson plowed into the room, she was scooping fresh grounds into the empty basket of the coffee maker.
Robertson held up a full cup of coffee, laughed knowingly at Ellie’s deception, and said, “You know I get my first cup outside, young lady.” He set his briefcase upright on his desk, sat on the corner nearest Branden, and frowned. “Why have you been annoying the professor, Ellie?”
Ellie feigned hurt feelings, smiled mischievously, and stepped out to her dispatcher’s desk.
Robertson sat on the corner of his desk, opened the latches on his briefcase, took out a CD, and said, “Mike, you’ve got to hear this song.” He stepped around to the player on the shelves behind his desk, slid in the disk, punched up the song, and hit play. “I got this down in Columbus,” Robertson said, and dropped into the chair behind his desk.
Branden asked, “Is that Ian Tyson?”
Robertson said, “Who else?” and held a finger up to his lips.
Tyson’s strong voice gave out a proud, waltzing ballad about a horse named Stormy who had saved a mother and her baby. Robertson sang along at one point, with his eyes shut, arms waving in the air with the beat:
“Old Stormy just snorted,
and he hit that long trot.
Man how that pony could give ’er.”
When the ballad was over, Robertson spun around, snapped the music off, and said, “Man, that’s good. Where do they get those songs?”
Branden asked, “The horse saved the day?”
“You weren’t listening?” Robertson asked, disbelieving.
“I suppose so,” Branden
said weakly, struggling not to laugh.
Robertson turned and caught Branden’s helpless expression. “That horse is a hero!” he said, exasperated.
Branden tried to redeem himself by saying, “OK, Bruce, I’ll bite. Why do you like that song?”
Robertson sat down heavily and said, “Cowboy songs are about life, Mike. Philosophy. Maybe it’s just too deep for you college boys up on the hill.”
“Why don’t you try me,” Branden said, amused and softly laughing at his petty sin.
Robertson forgave him instantly, and warmed quickly and enthusiastically to the task. “That’s a song about competence, Mike. The kind of raw competence that flat gets the job done, when nobody else can do it. One horse that could have made that ride. One man who had the guts to try. Ability, Mike, and can-do pride.”
“And you like that?” Branden asked, knowing full well that steadfastness and strong ability were among the few things in life that Robertson truly honored.
Robertson turned philosophical. “They say you’re supposed to be happy, Mike, but I don’t have the faintest idea what that means any more. Not since Renie died. On the radio last night, driving back from Columbus, there was some dope with a talk show, squawkin’ about how we’re meant to be happy people. Do this, do that, be good to yourself, be happy. Happiness? I wouldn’t know what that is.”
Branden stood, leaned against the wall by the big window, and listened, aware that Robertson rarely emptied himself so openly.
“Now, satisfaction is something I can understand.” Robertson lit a cigarette and drew on it with obvious enjoyment. “I’m talking about the ability to do the job, regardless of circumstances. Like you, up on the Marblehead point, with Ricky Niell’s life in your hands. I’d have given a year’s pay to have seen you. Like Stormy, there, who never let down.
“So, if you ask me what pulls my chain, I’d have to say it is ability, Mike, and competence. Also steadfastness, loyalty, endurance. People who’ll stand in the gap when their moment arrives. Also liberty, justice, and trustworthiness. But happiness? Don’t rightly know what that is, Mike. I’d rather be competent, these days, than happy. I’d sooner be thought vigilant. So, in that little cowboy song, there, I get all of that. Stormy, the only one who could make it through to town, when it needed doing the most.”
