The Outsider (James Bishop 4)

by Dean, Jason

  ‘Both of them. You’re okay now, Mrs Lomax.’ He knelt down in front of her and cleared his throat. ‘Uh, did they …?’

  ‘No,’ she said, looking over towards the doorway. She shivered involuntarily and gave a humourless chuckle. ‘No, I was spared that, at least. But that blond one, he … he liked using his fists on me. That’s what turned him on most, I think. I’ve lost two teeth at least. Is he … is he really dead?’

  ‘He really is.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if you weren’t. Let me go find the keys to those cuffs, okay? I won’t be a second.’

  Leaving the lantern with her, he picked up the light in the hallway and took it back to Roy’s body. He searched the corpse’s pants pockets and then his jacket pockets, but he didn’t find any keys on the guy. Then he went over to Curtis’s body and quickly found a large set of keys in his pants pocket, and a cell phone in his jacket. He went through the keys and when he saw one that looked small enough for the cuffs, he returned to Mrs Lomax in the other room.

  ‘Who … who are you?’ she asked, as he used the key on her wrist.

  ‘A friend.’ The key turned and the cuff clicked open.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, pulling her wrist free. She began rubbing it with her other hand. ‘But I’ve never seen you before. How do you know my name? How did you even find me here?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Mrs Lomax, and it doesn’t really matter right now.’ He figured about fifteen minutes had passed since he’d left Strickland in the car, and he desperately wanted to get back on the road again, but he couldn’t leave the poor woman just yet. He still had to call 911, plus he had a few questions of his own to ask.

  But then Mrs Lomax suddenly slumped forwards and began sobbing quietly. Bishop wanted to comfort her somehow, but wasn’t sure what her reaction would be from being touched, so he did nothing. ‘It’s all right,’ he said.

  ‘No, it’s not all right,’ she said. ‘They killed my dog, the bastards. That blond one there kept laughing about it when he was beating me, and said he must have already died of hunger by now, alone in the darkness.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Oh, my poor baby.’

  ‘He was lying,’ Bishop said. ‘It’s only been two days and Biff’s perfectly fine, although he misses you.’

  Mrs Lomax’s head jerked up and she gaped at him. ‘You saw Biff? He’s all right? Really?’

  ‘Really. I let him out of that basement and fed him before coming out here. I also left him enough food and water to last a couple more days, just in case.’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’ She said and gave a long sigh. Then she frowned at him. ‘Wait a minute, you said I’ve only been here two days?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Her shoulders slumped again. ‘And I thought I’d been stuck in this room for a week. Only two days. Jesus.’

  ‘Look, Mrs Lomax, I’m calling 911 and then I’ll have to leave you before the ambulance and the cops get here. Will you be okay on your own?’

  She looked up at him and nodded. ‘Now I know my baby’s all right, I’ll be fine.’

  Bishop studied her face. Despite the haggard features and the bruising and the dried blood, it was still a very beautiful face, and he now saw steel behind the woman’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. He believed her. Nodding, he picked up Curtis’s cell phone and dialled 911. When a male dispatcher asked him which service, Bishop quickly gave him the South Sherbourne Street address and said there was an injured woman in need of medical attention on the second floor of the old theatre, as well as the bodies of the two men responsible. He hung up when the dispatcher tried to press him for details, then wiped his prints off the phone and placed it on the floor.

  ‘Before I go,’ he said, ‘are you up to answering a question or two?’

  ‘Questions? About what?’

  ‘Well, those two were obviously keeping you here for a reason other than just beating up on you. What was the reason?’

  Mrs Lomax wiped her good eye and said, ‘I don’t know. They didn’t tell me much. When we first got here I had to call Frank – that’s my husband, he’s a US marshal – and convince him to do certain things at this safe house he was staying at, or they’d kill me.’

  ‘I know about Frank. Was it hard to convince him?’

  ‘No, not once he realized they were serious. But … you know about Frank? How?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. What kinds of things did he have to do?’

  ‘Well, he had to hide some car keys under a mat, I remember that. Then he had to remove the firing pins of certain guns in the house. Oh, and he had to loosen an axle nut on one of the vehicles. The black man told me later that there was some kind of shootout and that Frank was wounded and in hospital, and that the police were all waiting for him to regain consciousness and tell them what happened. Once he woke up, I was to call him and tell him what to do next, but I don’t know what I was supposed to say.’

  Bishop had a pretty good idea of what she was supposed to say, but he’d heard enough. He had more pressing matters at hand, like vacating the area before the cops arrived.

  He got to his feet and said, ‘Okay, thanks. I better go now.’

  ‘But what shall I tell the police when they ask about you?’

  ‘Tell them everything that happened. Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that. Well … thank you. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.’

  ‘You already have,’ he said, and left her.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Bishop was just emerging from the passageway at the side of the building when he heard the sirens in the distance. He couldn’t tell from which direction, and there were no tell-tale flashing lights either. But they were getting closer. It seemed they didn’t waste any time responding to 911 calls around these parts.

  He sprinted down to the end of the block, passing the two remaining buildings, and turned right at the intersection where the Nissan was still where he’d left it.

  Strickland must have spotted him in the rear-view. He opened the driver’s door, got out and smiled when he saw Bishop approaching. ‘Man, I was getting worried for a moment there. Are those sirens for you?’

  ‘Yeah. Get in the other side. I’ll drive.’

  Strickland jogged round to the passenger side and shut the door. Bishop got in the driver’s seat and checked the dashboard clock. It was still only 00.52, which matched his own estimate. He started the engine, but didn’t switch on the lights yet. He just sat there watching the front, while checking the rear-view every other second.

  ‘So what are we waiting for?’ Strickland said. ‘Let’s get going.’

  ‘You saw how empty the streets were coming in,’ Bishop said. ‘A cop seeing us drive away from the scene might wonder what we’re doing out so late and decide to check us out. No sense inviting trouble. Let’s just wait.’

  Bishop counted the seconds as the approaching sirens steadily became louder. Forty-three had already passed when he saw flashing blue and red lights suddenly appear up ahead, about a hundred feet from their position.

  ‘Get down,’ Bishop said, sliding down in his own seat until his head was just below the window frame. Strickland quickly did the same.

  It took another nine seconds for the vehicle to speed past them, siren blaring and lights flashing. Bishop heard a screeching of brakes as it reached the intersection behind them, and he raised himself up and looked out the rear window. The driver made a sharp left turn and a second later the car was gone, though he could still see the red and blue lights reflecting against the buildings on the other side of the street.

  Sitting up again, Bishop turned on the Nissan’s headlights and pulled out onto the street. He kept the speed at a steady thirty and headed up McNeely until he reached the next intersection where he turned right. The sirens seemed to be getting fainter, which was a good sign. And while they saw a few more vehicles in the main part of town, none of the
m were police cars, which was even better.

  Finally Bishop got them back on Route 46 and kept them on a south-westerly heading. Once they got close to Bloomington, he’d get onto State Road 37 and head north until they could join the eastbound 252. Then they could really start laying down the miles. As long as there were no more distractions.

  ‘So you planning on telling me how it went back there,’ Strickland said, ‘or am I supposed to guess?’

  Bishop sighed. ‘It went badly. They’re both dead, so we’re no better off than we were before. Karen Lomax is still breathing, though, so it wasn’t a total loss.’

  ‘Shit, I knew it all sounded too good to be true.’ He shook his head. ‘So she’s okay, at least?’

  ‘Well, the blond one got his rocks off by repeatedly beating the crap out of her, but she’ll heal. She’s a born survivor. I even managed to ask her a few questions before I left, and she was able to confirm a few things for me.’

  ‘Yeah? Like what?’

  ‘Like how I was right about her husband. They forced her to call him the morning of the assault and got him to loosen one of the nuts on the SUV’s axle, and he also removed firing pins from some of the guns, probably the reserve automatic weapons. And a few other things besides.’

  They were approaching a four-way intersection with a red traffic light. There was no other traffic. Bishop drove straight on through without slowing.

  ‘So why were they holding on to her?’

  ‘They were waiting for her husband to regain consciousness, she said. She didn’t know why, but if I had to guess, I’d say they were going to put pressure on him to confess that he was the inside man right from the start.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So Hartnell can protect the real source of the leak, I imagine. And since he wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to protect another lowly marshal, it has to be somebody pretty high up on the food chain. Somebody who can still be useful to Hartnell somehow. And I also remember Delaney telling me she was reporting straight to Director Christiansen on this job, which kind of narrows things down.’

  ‘You mean the director of the US Marshals Service? The man at the top?’

  Bishop just shrugged.

  ‘Jesus.’ Strickland paused, then said, ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Say Lomax wakes up, does what they want and ’fesses up. What then? Those two bozos back there aren’t about to let the wife go, are they? She knows too much.’

  ‘No, they’d have wasted her. Without a doubt.’

  ‘So how can that work then? As soon as Lomax finds out his wife’s dead, he retracts his confession and it’s back to square one.’

  Bishop shook his head. ‘Once you confess to a major felony, it’s not so easy to go back on it. Especially when all the pieces fit together so nicely. And Lomax actually did sabotage the safe house, don’t forget. And anyway, how would he ever know for sure that his wife’s dead? Those two back there weren’t likely to tell him, were they?’

  ‘But the empty house …’

  ‘… could mean anything,’ Bishop finished. ‘Everybody knew how suspicious Lomax was in regards to his wife. As far as the feds are concerned she could have simply gotten tired of her husband’s attitude and decided to take off. Happens all the time.’

  The headlights of an oncoming vehicle lit Strickland’s face as he turned to Bishop. ‘After leaving her pet dog to starve to death in the basement?’

  ‘That’s been known to happen too.’

  ‘Well, you sure screwed up their plans on that score. Those two are dead, the wife’s still alive, and her husband’s in the clear once he wakes up. So now Hartnell’s got something else to worry about. I like that.’

  So did Bishop. Lomax had told him on Monday that he was like a loose screw rattling around, messing up the works. Turned out he was right, just not in the way he intended.

  There were some overhead signs just up ahead. Bishop saw the next exit was for Route 37 and steered the vehicle into the far right-hand lane. It was 01.03. Four hours before the next phone call, and over two hundred miles still to cover.

  Bishop increased their speed.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  At 02.32, Bishop was heading east on State Road 44 when he heard something interesting on the CB. For much of the journey he’d been listening to static and white noise, interspersed with the occasional snatch of random conversation from nearby operators. But then he caught the middle of a conversation with some guy complaining about a ‘… shitload of advertising on the 44, east a Connersville. Just cost me half-a-goddamn-hour, and I was already behind. Assholes.’

  Checking there was nothing behind them, Bishop took his foot off the gas and the vehicle began to slow. He knew that, in CB terminology, ‘advertising' meant a police car with its lights on. And the speaker, who sounded like a trucker carrying a heavy load, was saying there were a lot of them. Which could only mean a roadblock. And Connersville was the next town along this route, less than three miles away from their current position.

  Close. Very, very close.

  Pulling over to the side of the road, Bishop listened as another voice came back with, ‘I hear you, hoss. They sure know how to screw up a workin’ man’s timetable.’

  ‘You got that right, man,’ the first guy said. ‘I tell you, it’s gettin’ harder and harder to earn an honest buck in this damn country. Assholes, every goddamn last one of ’em. Next time I’ll …’ Then the signal began to fade out, gradually morphing into static again.

  ‘Trouble?’ Strickland asked.

  ‘Roadblock just up ahead, by the sounds of it,’ Bishop said. As far as he was concerned the CB radio had just paid for itself. He checked the GPS and quickly came up with an alternate route that would take them past the problem area. Checking his rear-view and seeing nothing behind them, Bishop made a U-turn and then took them west for a few hundred yards until he spotted the turn-off he wanted. It would add another ten or twelve miles to their journey, but they were making pretty good time, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

  Strickland soon lapsed into silence again. He’d been that way since Breeden, but then the man had plenty to think about. The most important of which was that in three more hours he’d see his son again, probably for the last time.

  Bishop had told Strickland that he wanted both father and son alive at the end of this, but he knew how unlikely that was. He was under no illusions, and saw reality for what it was. And with the odds so stacked against them, Bishop knew that just getting Barney back safe and sound would put them well ahead of the game. Anything over and above that would be verging on the miraculous. And he’d never believed in miracles. Not even as a child.

  Leaving Strickland alone with his private thoughts, Bishop kept his eyes on the twin beams of light spreading out before them and just drove.

  At 04.22, they were still travelling east on the little-used State Road 122 when they crossed the state line into Ohio. At least that’s what the GPS said, and Bishop had no reason to doubt it.

  ‘We’re in Ohio,’ Bishop said, breaking the silence for the first time in an hour.

  Strickland rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. Didn’t you live here when you were working for Hartnell?’

  ‘Well, we lived in Lancaster,’ Strickland said. ‘That’s about a hundred and fifty miles east of here. But that was only for the last couple of years. Before that, I operated out of Cincinnati, where we had a little place out in the suburbs. Why?’

  ‘So you don’t know this western section of the state all that well?’

  ‘Not all that well.’

  ‘Good.’ Bishop nodded, satisfied. As ever, all information was useful, and that little fact could very well be made to work in their favour when the time came.

  Which would be just over half an hour from now.

  At 04.53, they were heading north on County Road 25A when Bishop spotted the lights of an all-night Marathon gas station about a half-mile up ahead. Since they were down to a quarte
r tank, he reduced his speed.

  Strickland was still looking at the cell phone in his hand. He’d taken it from his jacket pocket ten minutes before and had been staring at it ever since, waiting for the call.

  Bishop turned into the station entrance and saw it was a pretty basic set-up, with a steel canopy overlooking two pumps, and a small one-storey shop set further back. Inside the store, the night guy was sitting next to the cash till, staring at a portable TV. The only other vehicle was a sedan parked to the right of the building, which was probably his. There were no other customers.

  Pulling up next to the first pump, Bishop killed the engine and got out. He went into the store, gave the guy a twenty, and walked back out again. The guy had barely glanced away from the TV the whole time.

  As he was filling the tank with unleaded, Strickland got out of the car and came over. He was frowning at the cell phone in his hand. ‘We just got some kind of text. I can’t figure it out, though. And there’s a phone number with it, so it can’t be from Callaway.’

  ‘Let’s see. Take over for me.’ They switched places. As Strickland continued filling the tank, Bishop took the phone and looked at the number first, and then the text message. The message read, Good to go.

  Bishop pressed Reply and keyed in Posit? He pressed Send.

  Strickland said, ‘So you know who it’s from?’

  ‘I know.’

  Strickland waited for more. When none came, he said, ‘So? You want to fill in the blanks for me?’

  ‘Not yet. It might all come to nothing anyway.’

  The cell phone chirped as a reply came back. Bishop opened up another message. It was just as brief as the first one: Penthouse. 360.

  Nodding to himself, Bishop keyed in his reply – Gear? – and sent it off. Less than twenty seconds later, a reply came back: ATCO.

  ‘ATCO?’ Strickland said, looking over Bishop’s shoulder as he gripped the pump. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means all taken care of,’ Bishop said.