‘You too, Terry.’
It was. Over a number of years I had avoided contacting him because he felt indebted to me for saving his live on the battlefield, yet that debt felt like my own weight to carry and something I wanted to avoid calling in. Last summer he repaid the debt – and more. It made all the difference. I could now relax in his company, and it felt great to have someone alongside me who I could trust – and had trusted – with my life. When I looked at Terry, I knew the man would die for me if it ever came to it. There are not an awful lot of things in life more humbling.
‘It’s been a long time coming,’ he said, his eyes back on the car park surveying our surroundings. ‘But I always thought we’d have our moment again.’
‘It took me long enough to find my way through the mess I created for myself.’
‘That’s a little harsh, Mike. Losing your parents and getting invalided out of a job you loved all in the same year would screw with anyone’s head.’
It all seemed so long ago now, but I knew he was right. Fourteen years earlier, a thin sheet of black ice less than a mile from our front door, led to a tragic accident that cost the lives of my adopted parents. My birth mother had given me up for adoption shortly after I was born, having apparently never made a note of who my father was. It was a closed adoption, but I’d never had a single moment of desire to meet my biological parents. Losing the only ones I ever knew didn’t alter that, but getting wounded two months later and then losing my posting four months afterwards due to that injury, almost broke me. None of which was any excuse for leaving my wife and child, even though that abandonment was purely on an emotional and psychological level.
‘Donna gave me plenty of chances,’ I said, reflecting on how tough my anger and depression had made her life with me. ‘She put up with it for years waiting for me to turn it all around. So I understand what you mean, mate, but I did create that nightmare, and I did take far too long to come out of it. I’m thankful every day that it didn’t cost me my relationship with my daughter as well as my wife.’
‘Wendy is a great kid. You have no worries there. She loves you to bits, that much is obvious. And Donna has forgiven you.’
‘She has? How would you know that?’
‘I can see it her eyes when she looks at you, Mike. She came through it okay as well.’
I hoped he was right. I knew Donna and I were finished as a couple, but we were still parents to a beautiful, vibrant teenager who needed us both in her life.
Over our food, Terry had suggested we look into the police side of things rather than the FBI involvement. The Bureau were not the first to arrive on scene, and it had to have been a cruiser that first came upon Vern’s vehicle. We had no contacts out here, therefore no traction. But Drew’s PI firm might have a way in. I didn’t like the idea of us having to liaise with them. Point of fact, I wanted to keep as far away from the other team as possible. I had to admit that I didn’t have a better idea, though. Other than maybe one, which had occurred to me only moments before. I discussed it with Terry, and as usual it took him no time at all to weight it up and make a decision. On this occasion, it was a single nod in the affirmative.
Ten minutes later, using the prepaid mobile I’d purchased from a nearby store, I dialled the local PD number I had pulled up on the phone’s browser. When the call was connected I told the woman on the other end of the line that I had information about the vehicle found out on Route 70 and needed to speak to whichever officers had discovered it abandoned. I gave the woman the registration number, too. I assumed I would not be put through to the officers in question, but I did hope for a name to crop up in conversation.
‘That case has now been taken over by the FBI,’ the woman said after a few moments which I assumed had been spent checking the computer records.
‘Oh, yes I realise that,’ I said. I lowered my voice until it became conspiratorial. ‘Thing is, I’m a fellow police officer visiting the area from the UK. I may have vital information, and I would rather give that information to the two officers whose job it was to secure the scene. I don’t know about you, but I hate it when the big shots breeze in and scoop up the best cases. So if we can keep this away from the Feebs until your guys have had a chance to check it out…’
I left it hanging there. She would either take the bait and cave, or build her defences more strongly.
‘Yeah, I get where you’re coming from, honey,’ she said after a slight pause. ‘So, that would be Officers Fraser and Clark.’
‘That’s great. Thank you for your help. Are they on duty right now?’
‘They are, but they are out on patrol. They are due back at the department in a couple of hours, so you could try calling back then. Or, how about you give me your contact information and I’ll have them call you right now or maybe even pay you a visit.’
I smiled to myself. The anti-FBI bait had been juicy and far too tasty not to snap up. ‘That would be perfect. I’m actually on the road between hotels right now, so if you could ask them to call this number I’d be happy to speak to them.’ I gave the mobile number, thanked the woman, and hung up.
‘Nicely done,’ Terry said, nodding approvingly. ‘You are getting more devious by the day.’
‘That’s your influence.’
‘If so, then I’m happy to be of service. You think they’ll call?’
‘Oh, they’ll call. They won’t be able to help themselves.’
‘So, what then?’
I grinned. ‘You ever held two Roswell police officers at gunpoint before?’
8
Isaac Priest was a mean drunk because he was a mean man even without alcohol slopping around in his bloodstream. He was the kind of man who kicked stray dogs and cursed at the elderly who held him up waiting in line at the Walmart checkout counter when they pulled out a wad of coupons. A man whose face was twisted into a permanent sneer, and whose friends could be counted on the fingers of a single mitten. The liquor served only to fuel all of his numerous petty resentments, and when his words dried up he was not averse to letting his powerful fists do all of the shouting and hollering for him. Priest was banned from the three bars closest to where he lived, which is why he had been in the Corona Main Street saloon on the night Joe Kane ran into the twin peaks of the Barrow boys.
Kane knew all about the man. Still two years shy of fifty, Priest had nothing else to do and nowhere better to be when there was a bar open somewhere nearby. Not that his life had always been so meaningless, or his head so fucked up with anger and bitterness. He had poured concrete to earn a living for the better part of fifteen years, but blew two cervical discs and a patella in a hard collision playing football for his company team. He lost his job one month later, his wife of twenty years one year after that, and all of his friends somewhere in between. Living off part pension and part disability, and with insurance taking care of most of his medical needs, Priest had long since decided to take on his liver in a fight to the death, armed with booze and an unhealthy reluctance to stop drinking it.
No sane bartender took the keys to Priest’s truck away from him, irrespective of how many beers and Wild Turkey chasers Priest had got himself on the outside of. Not unless they were looking for a beat down. Which was why, on Tuesday evening at a little after five, Kane knew that Priest would drive himself home on largely empty roads from the bar he’d been frequenting for the past few weeks. Travelling roads with a history of making corpses out of drunk drivers, Kane wished Priest a safe journey and hoped he would not fall foul of Sheriff Crozier along the way.
When Priest yanked open the door to his elderly, rust-bucket of a motorhome, switched on the dim lights, and laid eyes on the Native American from the night before sitting there in the Lay-Z-Boy recliner as bold as brass, Priest grinned and bunched his fingers into fists as tight as the arthritis in his knuckles would allow.
‘You got some fucking cojones on you, Tonto,’ Priest said, squaring his shoulders and staggering towards Kane. ‘But I guarantee
you’ll weep like a fucking baby when I kick your balls so hard they’ll need to Heimlich you to free ’em.’
Kane shifted faster than any man his size had a right to move. As Priest stepped in and swung a right-handed haymaker, Kane came out of the chair as if propelled by more than something physical. He dipped low and swayed sideways, the punch missing him by inches. In retaliation, Kane stamped down hard on Priest’s shin, letting his boot scrape along the bone. Priest let out a cry that was all moist air from his lungs, the breath sucked away by a pain so intense it was as if a jolt of electricity had shot through his leg. Blinded by tears that flowed from both eyes, Priest never saw the head-butt that followed. He would have felt it though. Felt the cartilage in his nose crumple like a too-wet concrete that never got a chance to set properly, tasted the warm and cloying blood as it splashed down his mouth and chin. And then the pain again, just like before, only transferred from his lower leg to the centre of his face.
Priest’s attempts to hold both his shin and his destroyed nose, whilst still computing the agonising pain, as a fresh welling of tears blinded him, were utterly useless. He didn’t need either the hard slam to the gut or the uppercut to the chin that sent his world hurtling into darkness to know that he was done even before he’d got started. But Kane wondered if the man’s final thought before slipping fully into unconsciousness was to wonder whether he would ever wake up again.
Kane heaved the big slab of meat that was Priest into the recliner and waited. He kept watch on Isaac Priest’s eyes as they first flickered, then became thin wounds in his face, before finally opening fully. The man blinked several times, before fixing his gaze on Kane, who now sat in a chair opposite. Despite the beating he had received, Priest would undoubtedly have come barrelling out of that chair in a mad rush for vengeance had the man who’d handed out that punishment not been sitting there with a large hunting knife in his hand.
‘Welcome back,’ Kane said, no hint of triumph in his voice. ‘I urge you not to try anything stupid. I could skin you with this blade and you would not even notice until you stood up to leave and shed it behind you like a snake.’
Priest swallowed hard. Anger flared in his eyes. ‘I need to take a piss,’ he managed to say through a jaw that must have felt like it was on fire.
‘If you really have to, do it where you sit. If all you want is the gun you keep taped behind the toilet bowl, don’t bother. I will leave it with you when I go, but for now it stays out of your reach.’
The drunk hung his head and exhaled heavily, a wheeze in his chest leaking out like a punctured air line. ‘The fuck you want with me?’ he said. His voice was deep but undemanding given his circumstances.
‘Information.’
‘You coulda asked. You coulda knocked on my fuckin’ door an’ just asked.’
Kane made a dismissive gesture with the hand not holding the knife. ‘You would have told me where to go. We would have had words. Blows would have been exchanged. Ultimately we would have ended up right where we are now, but my way we got here quicker and less painfully for one of us.’
Priest jerked his head up. He glared at Kane and shook his head. ‘You know you’re gonna have to kill me, right?’
‘Are you saying you won’t give me what I came here for?’
‘No. That’s not what I’m saying. You ask, I’ll answer. Like I woulda done if you’d only asked in the first place. But you didn’t. Instead you beat me, humiliated me. So when we’re done, you leave without ending me and I won’t rest until I’ve drained every last drop of blood from the gash I’m gonna open up in your throat.’
‘So you’re what… going to hunt me down?’
‘You bet your ass I am.’
‘You do know I’m Native American, right? Indian.’
‘You ain’t exactly in disguise, Tonto.’
‘And you’re going to hunt me?’
‘Yeah. Damn right! Cause I’m a fucking Marine!’
‘Well, hoo-ra for you, Mr Priest. And you were a Marine. A lifetime and about fifty pounds ago. I will always be Native American, and no “paleface” is going to get the drop on me. So, enough with the macho bullshit and let’s get on with this.’
‘Fire away, you red motherfucker!’
Kane smiled and edged forward on his seat. He toyed with the knife, twirling it between his fingers. He noted Priest’s eyes straying to it, perhaps attracted by the gleam from the razor-edged carbon steel blade. The man behaved like a cat drawn to a glimmer of reflected light.
‘Two nights ago you were in the Main Street bar in Corona,’ Kane said.
‘I was, yeah. And your fight is with those Barrow twins, so why are you dicking around with me?’
‘I hope to meet with them again if time allows. Fate will decide that, not me. For now, you will have to do because you have the same information as them.’
‘Which is?’
‘While you were in the bar, two strangers entered. They asked questions. I want to know two things. First, when I show you a photo I want to know if it’s of one of the two men from that night. Second, I want to know what they asked.’
Priest laughed through his obvious discomfort, his big chest heaving. He coughed a couple of times before replying. ‘They asked what all those dumb fucks ask. They wanted to know where the crash site was. They got told about five different places, then they were impolitely invited to get the hell outta there.’
Kane maintained eye contact. He saw nothing to suggest the man was telling lies. The answer was as suspected, and counted for very little in the grander scheme of things. The most important clarification he sought was the identity of one of the two men. From the breast pocket of his raw cotton shirt he withdrew a passport-sized photograph. Taking care to ensure the hunting knife remained by his side, Kane stood and took a couple of steps closer to the man leaking alcohol fumes. He held the snapshot out in front of him.
‘Was this one of the two guys?’ he asked.
Priest squinted at it. Took a few seconds. Then shook his head. ‘Can’t say for sure. Could be, but I only got a look at one of the fellahs. This ain’t him. Might be the other one, but like I say, I don’t know for certain one way or the other.’
‘Look again. Think harder.’
Instead, the man stared up at him. The flesh around his face was puffing up, and was already the kind of red that looked as if it radiated heat. Blood continued to trickle from one of his nostrils, the liquid slick against the dried smears. His once muscular arms, faded ink indistinct beneath the tan and matted hair, hung uselessly by his side. A big man gone to seed is a sorry sight, Kane thought.
Priest said, ‘Don’t matter how long I look or how hard I think. Ain’t gonna change nothin’. You want me to lie, I’ll say whatever the fuck you want me to say. You want the truth, then the truth is I don’t know for sure.’
None of that was what Kane wanted to hear. He didn’t deal in possibilities, and neither did the Judge. Kane was a man unused to being given the run-around by professionals, so having these amateurs cause him so many problems was becoming personal. He tucked the photo back into his pocket and moved away towards the door.
‘If you want to come looking for me because of the beating I gave you,’ Kane said, peering back over his shoulder at Priest, ‘I will be around. Would be better for us both if you did not. But I will understand if I see you coming.’
‘Oh, you won’t see me until I’m sticking a gun in your ribs.’
Kane smiled. ‘A word of advice. Do not be undone by pride. Better men than you have lost their lives on that score.’
Priest scowled and nodded. ‘I guess we’ll see.’
‘I guess we will. I will say goodbye, then. For now.’
Priest nodded again.
Kane paused in the doorway. He looked around at the inside of the motorhome, which was cramped and dirty and unkempt. The place looked as if it had never felt the suck of a hoover or the touch of a dusting cloth. It smelled of sour breath, sour sweat, and a sour
disposition.
‘You like living like this?’ he asked.
‘What’s it to you?’ Priest said, his top lip a surly curve.
Kane shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just don’t understand it is all. I live alone, but I take pride. In my possessions. In myself. I wonder where yours got lost along the way. I kinda feel sorry for you.’
‘Fuck you, Sitting Bull!’
Kane let out a low chuckle. ‘You do know he beat Custer, don’t you? You dumb fuck.’
‘Yeah.’ Priest nodded, his eyes blazing like wildfires on the edge of darkness. ‘I also know he was gunned down by one of his own. Just like you’re gonna be, man. Just like you.’
‘What do you know about me?’ Kane asked, interested in the dipso all over again.
Priest cackled, his big chest rising and falling like bellows. ‘Enough to figure the Judge is gonna carve you up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Yeah, I know who you are, man. I know you work for that sonofabitch. That man sure loves to put his own kind in the ground.’
Kane stood there for a moment contemplating. He did not like the fact that this lowlife white man knew so much about affairs that should have remained within the reservation. Nor that he seemed well informed as to the true nature of Mangas Crow.
‘You sure you do not recognise the man in the photo?’ he asked
His swift change of tack was deliberate. Kane searched Priest’s eyes for a tell-tale flicker of recognition, but all he saw there was a hateful glower.
‘I told you all I have to tell you.’ His head tilted a little then, and his eyebrows and the vertical line in the centre of his forehead came together to form a W. ‘Except for one thing, I guess. Something that might interest you.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘It’s gonna cost you.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty.’ Priest’s tongue snaked out, wetting his lips.
‘I could beat it out of you.’
‘You could. But it’d be easier just to hand over the cash. I can take a beating.’
Cold Winter Sun Page 6
