Camouflage

by Aaron Pogue

  Eddie ducked his head but didn't concede the point. "They're old," he said. "I kinda feel like maybe, in spite of everything, they're as blind as old Goodall was." He sighed, disappointed. For a while he said nothing, then he brightened and offered her a smile. "But hey, maybe I can still get to you." He reached out to chuck her on the shoulder. "You're...well, you're not that old."

  She gave him a tight smile instead of an answer, then sat back and sighed. "Where does that leave us?"

  "Partners," Eddie said simply.

  "No, I mean here." She looked at her hands, studying her nails while she considered the case. "You're right. You've got some clout here, and I need to use that, but we're going to have to plan our approach."

  "I think the approach we used in there worked fine," Eddie said. "First you bust in accusing ordinary decent folks of being criminals—"

  "He's a gun runner, Eddie!" Katie snapped.

  Eddie went on as though he hadn't heard her. "And then I show up, rein you in, and charm the locals. Good cop, bad cop, right?"

  "Wrong," she said. "Because neither cop should play a buffoon, and that's the role you've cast me in." He started to respond to that, but she waved him to silence and went on in a calmly practical tone. "It's not personal. It just doesn't make sense for you to act so dismissive. There will still be times when the threat of force can carry us where your popularity doesn't. And I make a more credible threat of force than you do."

  "Fine," Eddie said. "We can play it like that. I'll be the nice one, popular with the locals, and you can be the condescending one who doesn't like me much."

  "The real cop," Katie said. "So we're just playing it straight."

  "But civil." Eddie glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "It cuts both ways, you know. I give you your dignity and you give me mine. Everyone wins."

  "You're right," she said. Then after a moment, reluctantly, "I'm sorry."

  "Hey, same here. Let's just do the job." He sat back and laced his fingers together behind his head. "Where we going next?"

  "Randall Loney's trailer." Katie brought the details back up on her handheld. "Another local entrepreneur who ran afoul of Burke's justice."

  "That man really got around," Eddie said.

  Katie shrugged. "Not such a surprise. Small communities like this tend to have lingering social pacts that don't fit into any kind of Jurisprudence categories. Sheriffs and magistrates end up doing a lot of low-grade enforcement and short-term detention to police that kind of stuff."

  Eddie looked her up and down. "You sound pretty familiar with the process—"

  "I considered it," Katie said. "Used to be a cop in Brooklyn, and I thought long and hard about moving somewhere I could be a magistrate and really do my part to keep the streets clean. Then I got the job at Ghost Targets."

  "Which just blows magistrate right out of the water," Eddie said, nodding. "You're putting real criminals behind bars."

  "Most of 'em," Katie said, keeping her voice light.

  Eddie just frowned. "So what did this Randall fellow do?"

  She'd already taken her jab, so Katie fought down her first response to Eddie's question. Randall had a detailed person-of-interest report in their casefile, but Eddie apparently hadn't even skimmed it. "Poaching," she said through clenched teeth. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. "Game wardens' service couldn't ever get him on the record, but Burke had him for selling the meat and other assorted parts out of season."

  She trailed off, waiting, and was gratified to see Eddie's forehead knit in concentration. "Wait. If this guy could get away with hunting off the record—"

  "Exactly," Katie said. "He's certainly someone we should talk to."

  Eddie sat forward. "Then what are we waiting for?" He was bouncing on the edge of his seat, and Katie couldn't help smiling.

  "Mr. Loney," she said. "He's on his way home."

  "From?"

  "Prison," Katie said, and watched sadly as the excitement in Eddie's eyes faded to confusion.

  "What?" he said. "But...when?"

  "Six-month sentence, cost him three with good behavior. He just got released this morning."

  "Oh." Disappointment crashed his expression. "So he's not our guy?"

  "He's not our guy." Katie almost felt sorry for him. "But he could still be useful."

  "Oh, sure," Eddie said. "He can give us a detailed report on the quality of food in the prison cafeteria."

  "He can tell us how he did it," Katie said.

  "Forget that," Eddie said, waving it away with one hand. "I can tell you how he did it. Give me twenty minutes in the field with one of those cameras and I can tell you every glitch it's got—"

  "But that's you," Katie said. "You're an expert. These guys aren't. Chances are good he knows one trick, and chances are good, whatever it is, that it's a trick every hunter in this town knows. When we talk with him we get inside the community."

  "I'm already in the community," Eddie said, dismissive. "Or I can be in a heartbeat, anyway. You go do your interview if you want to. I'm going to do something useful."

  "No!" Katie said, stern. "You're my partner, and you're going to do this right. Got it? We don't get to skip to the fun parts. This isn't an adventure, it's a criminal investigation, and we've got to do it right."

  Eddie frowned at her and storm clouds boiled behind his eyes, but he didn't say anything. Katie met his glare until he finally relented, drawing his neck down into his shoulders, and she nodded. "Good," she said. She checked her handheld one more time, then said again, "Good. Driver, take us to Randall's place. Thanks."

  She cleared all the windows and sat back to watch the scenery flow by. The town was a long and oft-broken string of lots, snaking along side-by-side directly off the little state highway. She passed trailer homes with chicken coops, horse barns, and nearly all of them with little half-acre gardens. She passed a run-down general store, a pretty little church, and three liquor stores. Out on the other side of town the car finally pulled to a stop in front of a trailer parked on cinder blocks.

  The moment Katie's door fell open she heard the sound of another one slamming. "He's running!" she said, then hit the ground at a sprint. She slowed as she approached the corner of the house. She drew her firearm, and shouted ahead, "Stop! FBI!"

  She heard a crashing in the underbrush. Maybe ten feet past the trailer. It certainly didn't sound like an ambush. She peeked around the corner, saw nothing, and darted on.

  Katie could see where he'd entered the woods. There was a little break in the trees, and she could see bent and snapped twigs from his passage. She took three leaping strides, then pulled herself up short. For a moment she stood listening to the sounds of him bulling his way through the trees, and they were already distant. There was no way she'd catch him in these woods—literally his back yard.

  Eddie came around the corner puffing, out of breath, and his eyes widened when he saw Katie just standing there. She smiled over at him, feeling a little foolish, and pulled out her handheld. She double-checked Randall's profile, and it showed him on parole. She grinned at that.

  "Hathor, lock down Randall Loney. Thanks." Off in the woods, probably a hundred yards out now, there came one final crash, louder than the rest, and then silence. Eddie laughed, staring at his handheld, and as he approached she saw he was watching Randall in HaRRE. She caught a glimpse of Randall face-down in the mud, arms flung out before him, legs pinned tight together.

  "Is he armed?" she asked. Eddie shook his head. She nodded toward the trees and pushed her way in, following the path Randall had left as much as the location details shown on her handheld.

  Behind her Eddie was still chuckling. "That's got to be fun."

  "Hurts like hell," she said, remembering. "They made us try them in the Academy." Powerful electromagnets worn around both ankles, charged off ambient power, with instant remote activation by anyone with the right credentials. "They put us out on the track, had us run sprints, and waited until we weren't ex
pecting it. Then...bam!"

  She shook her head. "I slid eight feet after I landed.Tore my arm all up and scraped my jaw pretty bad, too. Not fun at all. Effective, though." She switched to HaRRE, and saw Randall sitting up now, waiting patiently for them to come get him. "Definitely effective."

  She saw he was wearing a headset, too. "Hathor, connect me to Randall. Thanks." She waited and watched on her handheld as he looked up in irritation—probably right at one of the wilderness recorders—then rolled his eyes and accepted the connection.

  "What? You got me."

  "Mr. Loney," she said politely. "I'm Katie Pratt, a special agent with the FBI. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

  "Yeah," he said, sour. "I got the notion."

  She could just see him in the distance now, but she stayed on the line. "You understand it's a condition of your parole that you cooperate fully with law enforcement officers, right?" He didn't answer. She asked, "Why'd you run?"

  They broke through a line of trees and into a short, open glade. Randall sat at the far end of it, and he reached up to disconnect his headset. She saw a black smear of blood on his forearm from his fall, but otherwise he looked uninjured. She was relieved at that.

  As they approached, he finally answered her question. "You're Ghost Targets," he called to them. "You're investigating Timmy. I had nothing to do with that."

  "I believe you," Katie said. She stepped up over him, held his eyes for a moment, then hunkered down in front of him and rested her elbows on her knees. "You thought we'd suspect you, though—"

  "I hated that son of a bitch," Randall said. "You know that. It's all on the record. Bastard done me wrong." He turned his head to spit at the ground, and Katie saw blood mixed in. She winced.

  "Hathor, unlock Randall's restraints," she said. "Thanks." She heard a little surprised grunt from Eddie, but she wasn't concerned about Randall.

  The fallen man just stretched his legs, pulling them carefully apart, then sat forward to massage his calves. He probably had some pulled muscles to trouble him, too. Katie shook her head. "I'm sorry about that—"

  "It's nothing," Randall said. "Don't worry about it."

  "I need to know what you know about Timothy Burke's murder," she said.

  "Not a lot," Randall said. "Nothing. Guy's got some enemies 'round here, you've got to know that, but I can't think of a man in town'd be dumb enough to kill him."

  "Mmhmm." Katie nodded, checking her handheld. "What kind of enemies? Can you give me names?"

  "Sure," Randall said. "Me, Karla Brown, Jim Dade—"

  She nodded. "Everyone he's ever arrested?"

  "Not everyone," Randall said. He spat again. "But near enough, yeah. We like our government small out here."

  "I hear that," Eddie said, pushing forward and trying to insert himself into the conversation. He bent at the waist to extend a hand toward Randall. "Hey there, Eddie McSisters. I'm assisting in the investigation."

  Randall didn't take his hand. "Good for you." He never even took his eyes from Katie's. "You wanna help me up, and we can finish this conversation at the house?"

  Katie nodded, and with Eddie's help got Randall to his feet. Sure enough, he had a pretty vicious strain or sprain in his left calf and shin, and ended up leaning on Eddie all the way back through the woods.

  As they walked, Katie tried to continue her questioning. "Mr. Burke put you away for poaching, but the game wardens had nothing on you." She glanced over in time to see Randall's triumphant twitch of a smile, quickly lost in another grimace of pain. "Mind telling us how you managed that?"

  "Easy enough," Randall said. "These recorders are trash. I know boys just blow 'em right out of the trees. Come up on it from the right angle, carrying a rifle, and one well-placed shot'll do the job."

  Katie frowned, thinking it through. She didn't even know these woods, but from where she was standing she could spot three recorders.

  "Seems like a pretty tedious process," she said. "It looks to me like they've got pretty good coverage."

  Randall snorted. From his side, Eddie said, "I know. I tried to tell her."

  Randall met Katie's eyes. "Yeah. Sure. They've got 'em scattered pretty thick out here, but one in every, like, thousand has a little black band around the middle of it. Those are usually the highest ones up."

  He turned and pointed back in the direction they'd come from, and Katie followed the line to a tree another fifty yards beyond the spot where Randall had fallen. Up near the top, where he was pointing, she could just make out a little black speck that could be a recorder, but she certainly couldn't tell from here.

  "Those are the important ones," he said. "Don't ask me why, but you take out one of those, and you're pretty much in the clear for a quarter-mile radius."

  "Network nodes," Eddie said. "Those are the ones that broadcast back to the database. All the others just report in to them." He shook his head. "They're working on integrating the signal into the ambient power band, and then even the cheapest cameras will be able to report direct, but for now...you take out one of those nodes, you're on the hook for some serious damages. I'm surprised you can get away with that."

  "I don't," Randall said. "I knew a guy got busted out in Tennessee for that. But there's lots of ways to take 'em out. I hear there's an app you can run on your handheld—"

  "Yep," Eddie said, nodding. "Buffer overflow crashes the system. Takes about two hours for the camera to reset. The manufacturer's always patching those, and the hackers keep making new ones."

  Randall frowned. "I spent four hours one day sitting in a tree, installing and running a hundred different apps. Never could get one to work."

  "It'd only be one," Eddie said. "Whichever one works for the specific software version running on the recorder. You'd have to know—"

  "And I sure as hell don't. I barely figured out how to install the damn things."

  "Then how'd you do it?" Katie said.

  "Winchester one-oh-one." Randall said, and at blank looks from both of his interrogators he nodded back toward his trailer. "Shotgun. I can't tell you why, but if I fire that sucker within twenty feet of one of them striped recorders, it just shuts down."

  Eddie gaped. "You're kidding."

  "Swear it," Randall said. "Same as the app is supposed to do. I figured it out because every time I went pheasant hunting, I ended up losing coverage on my phone. Took me a while to work it out—"

  "It must be the specific frequency of the blast," Eddie said. "I'm sure you tested this with other guns?"

  "Not me," Randall said, "but yeah, some of the boys in town did. Nothing else worked."

  "It wouldn't," Eddie said. "They designed these cameras for two things—rescuing hikers and catching poachers—so you have to know they tested them against gunshot noise. Even up close."

  Randall shrugged. "I don't know. All I can tell you is, the Winchester one-oh-one got real popular in these parts after I figured that out."

  "So there are others who know the trick," Katie said, nodding to herself. "Can you get us a list of names? Never mind. Craig, generate a list of everyone connected to Timothy Burke who owns or has access to a Winchester one-oh-one. Thanks."

  Randall chuckled, and when Katie looked to him for clarification he spread his hands. "You might as well have asked for a directory listing for Bickmore, lady. Like I said, just about every hunter in town picked one up after I figured it out."

  Katie cocked her head to the side. "Why?"

  They stepped out of the trees then, into the half-mile-wide clearing that made room for the highway and the town. Randall breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his house and pointed to his back door. "Just go through there. Front is locked up."

  Katie pulled up HaRRE to check inside as they approached, but the trailer was empty. She made note of the locations of all his weapons—and there were lots of weapons—but the only one near the door was a newer-model rifle with an identity lock in good working order. She helped Eddie help Randall up the back step
s, and then they settled him in a chair by the table and Katie fetched him a glass of water. She and Eddie both turned down the beers he offered.

  She returned to her questioning. "Why would everyone in town suddenly need a Winchester one-oh-one?"

  Behind Randall's line of sight, Eddie rolled his eyes at her. For his part, Randall just shrugged. "Why not? It's a good gun, and it's nice to know you've got the option. You know?"

  "No." Katie sighed. "No, I really don't. I guess I'm going to have to figure it out, though."

  She chewed her lip for a moment, thinking, then met Eddie's eyes."Think we can figure out for sure if that was what broke the recorders on the day of the murder?"

  Eddie nodded. "Yeah. It should probably be something recognizable. Maybe get Randall here to pinpoint another time he used that trick to cross-reference."

  Re"It's in my file," Randall said automatically. "Timmy flagged a couple times."

  "Good," Katie said. "And we can alert the manufacturers to the defect, too." Randall and Eddie both winced at that, and Katie shook her head. She made a note on the casefile to follow through on that, then pinned Randall with her eyes.

  "Anything else you need to tell us?"

  "N—Nothing I can think of." He swallowed hard under her glare, then shook his head. "Nothing.... Well. Maybe."

  "What?"

  "Just...there were some guys building something out in the woods." He looked helpless, and more than a little pathetic. "Looked like some kind of radio tower."

  "A radio tower?" Katie frowned. "Where?"

  "Out west. Way off the roads. And down in a valley, too. That's what surprised me." He shook his head. "I never got too close, but I could see it from one of my favorite deer stands. I can get you the location."

  "Do that," Katie said. "It's probably nothing, but we'll check on it." She made another note on her casefile, then stepped toward the door. "Thank you for your help, Mr. Loney."