Cold Winter Sun

by Forder, Tony J.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ Terry said to me.

  I nodded. ‘Will you take care of the girls?’ I asked Kane.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And you have no reason to come looking for us, none of us, right?’

  ‘Not any longer.’

  ‘You worked hard to find your man. I assume you were the one who told your boss that we had rescued Vern. Are you really happy to know that he walks freely away with us?’

  ‘The man who ordered me to track down Vern Jackson is dead. I did my job by calling him from the mill, without knowing what he would do next. I did not know of his plans until I joined him here and then the two female hostages were delivered to us. I then followed my conscience. Take my gun with you when you leave. No one need know what I did here.’

  ‘It’s time,’ Terry said again, more urgently this time. The wail of sirens grew louder outside.

  I extended my hand to Kane, who regarded it with suspicion for a moment before grasping it. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For what you did here, you deserve our respect. You fight with honour.’

  Kane gave a single nod. ‘As do you. You are both warriors.’

  ‘There’s a county sheriff and an FBI agent waiting outside. They have our backs, but you might want to avoid them for the time being.’

  Another nod, this time accompanied by half a smile of gratitude.

  ‘You’re a man of few words, Mr Kane. You and my friend here should start a club.’

  Terry was now standing, holding on to Wendy who still seemed to be lost deep in shock even after being freed from the chair. It was understandable after all she had endured. Donna stood by our daughter’s side, softly caressing her arm, whispering soothing words. The two young girls clung to each other. I turned to leave, and as I did so I caught a vague blur of motion from the entrance to the office. I started to cry out a warning, but it was already too late.

  Five shots cut through the air, none of which were muffled by suppression. Stunned by both the noise and ferocity of the unexpected attack, it took me a few moments to gather my wits. When I looked up through the doorway preparing to fire back, I saw a figure now lying on the floor. All but the lower legs were hidden from view, but as I stared down I saw a familiar pair of snakeskin boots, toes pointing up. They were perfectly still.

  Then someone stepped across the doorway, staring down at the same pair of boots. It was Heather Green. The FBI agent continued to look down at Garcia for a few further seconds, before slowly turning to me. Her voice was soft as she spoke.

  ‘I caught sight of him entering the house from the garden. I followed him as quickly as I could. Either he or his partner killed Eugene, so I’m glad it was me who put the bastard down. I’m sorry if I was too late.’

  I realised immediately what she meant. I turned to my right. Terry appeared completely uninjured. As did Donna, and the two girls now shrieking once again behind her, hands to their mouths, eyes wide and round. Wendy had crumpled to the floor, but she was sobbing uncontrollably and there was no sign that she had come to any physical harm. I continued to swivel, and as I turned fully my gaze fell upon Joe Kane who now lay on the floor alongside Crow.

  His eyes did not lock with mine, however.

  There had been five gunshots, and not all of them had been fired by Agent Heather Green. One round from Snakeskin had hit Kane in the stomach, the second in the heart. Blood had erupted from his body, but it no longer pooled or bubbled. The second shot had killed him within a beat or two.

  He had been standing alongside me. I was certain that his life had been ended by bullets intended for me.

  ‘We’ll have to bring the girls with us,’ Terry said, his voice as calm and even as ever.

  I nodded. ‘Get everyone out of here. I won’t be a moment.’

  In the silence of the room I heard the rush of water for the first time, and assumed there had to be a stream and a waterfall outside in the grounds. It was a soothing sound, and seemed so out of place amongst all this death and destruction.

  Before leaving, I crouched by the side of the fallen Native American, reached out a hand, and closed his eyes. I took two quarters from my pocket and sat them on his eyelids. Not to stop them from popping open again, but to prevent the intrusion of insects. He did not deserve that kind of indignity.

  Joe Kane had been my enemy, but had died an ally.

  And a true warrior.

  36

  We drove in stunned silence until we were about halfway between the small towns of Angus and Nogal, coming up on a rest stop set into a ridge in the steep hills to our right. To our left the Sierra Blancas rose in the distance, their daunting snow-tipped peaks looking cold, uninviting and treacherous. Although we had all eventually agreed to meet back at the sheriff’s office in Carrizozo, I decided I had to pull over to take stock. I was still shaking, and I had to admit that the emotional response to what had taken place was affecting me.

  By the time the six of us had emerged from inside Mangas Crow’s home, the shooting was all over. My guess was that Garcia had initiated the entry having initially caused confusion by setting the fire and then shooting at anyone and anything that moved. With no further instructions or command from the man with the snakeskin boots, I was pretty sure those with him had funnelled back and left him to his fate. These men were gangsters – if that – and would have no stomach for a genuine firefight. Their head gone, such snakes would wither and die.

  I caught up with the others. Both Donna and Wendy fell into my arms, hands to their faces, weeping like they would never stop. We hugged it out. I held them tight, not uttering a single word. There was nothing I could say to either of them that would break through the horror unravelling inside their heads. All I could do was be there for them.

  Crozier was waiting for us on the other side of the utility room door. A prone figure lying in a pool of blood several yards away on the stone patio bore testimony to the fact that our exit had been protected as we had hoped. Heather confessed to having fired the fatal shot before spotting Garcia, and she wore the pain of that uneasily. Crozier revealed that he had taken charge of the incident. He had allowed the firefighters onto the upper slopes of the property to do their work, but had kept the local PD encamped outside the entrance, the two female employees having already been escorted towards them.

  ‘I got no idea how to explain away any of this,’ he told us. ‘But I sure as hell don’t aim to sit here in Ruidoso being grilled by detectives. I can’t keep them cops at bay much longer, either. So we gotta end this right now.’

  It took us no more than a minute to come up with the next part of the plan. Green would badge her way out together with Donna and Wendy, me and Terry concealed in the back of her vehicle, while Crozier took the two young girls and filled the locals in on some of what had taken place. The idea being that the events both on the Crow property and back at the sawmill were now part of a federal investigation, and while the police and the county sheriff’s office would have their say in matters, it was Green who held all the cards. She would drop us off at our Jeep, after which we would all head to Carrizozo. There we would meet up in Crozier’s office as soon as he could get away, at which point we would devise a single strategy upon which we could all agree.

  All very well in theory, but I also knew that despite us having rescued Vern from the clutches of the men back at the sawmill, we were going to lose him to the justice system before having the opportunity to question him further. There were things I needed to know before that happened. When Heather dropped us off at our Jeep, I persuaded her to allow Donna and Wendy to ride with me, and for Terry to accompany her. She took some convincing, but I was honest enough to tell the agent that I wanted to call Vern and have him open up about the past few days and the events leading to them – something I felt I could not do in her presence. The three of us headed out of town with Heather and Terry close on our tail.

  After settling my nerves and waiting for my heart to stop smacking against my ribcage,
I called Chelsea on the mobile number she had given me. She was thankful to hear from us, pleased to learn that Donna and Wendy were safe, and that same relief was evident when she told me Kelper was out of danger and had come around. He had a bad concussion and a few stitches in his head wounds, but looked all set to be released after a further forty-eight-hour assessment.

  ‘Chelsea,’ I said. ‘You hold tight. I don’t know how much you are in the frame for all that went down today, so when the police arrive – and they will – you tell them they need to speak to Sheriff Crozier and then you say nothing more. The sheriff is going to arrange for you to be brought over to his office, but the locals will get to you first and they are likely to try some intimidation. Don’t buy into anything they try to sell you. Ask for Crozier and make sure his deputies stick around. Okay?’

  She told me she was, and sounded clear-minded about it. I then asked to speak with Vern.

  ‘Listen to me closely,’ I said, looking briefly over my shoulder at Donna and Wendy who sat wrapped in each other’s arms. ‘You are clearly intelligent enough to realise that you are not going home today and maybe not any day soon. Now, I can prepare a story for your uncle and your mother, but I want to know the truth.’

  ‘What more do you need to know?’ he asked me.

  ‘When you told me you’d put the money back using the laptop they stuck in front of you, was that only for the people who were holding you, or did you mean all the money?’

  ‘All of it. Every last dime. I swear.’

  ‘So their only concerns afterwards were the financial records you stole, plus the software that allowed you to carry out the scam in the first place.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Okay. When you tell your story later on,’ I said. ‘You don’t mention any of that. You hear me? Nothing about the disks at all.’

  ‘I do. But how come?’

  ‘Never mind. Let’s just say that if it does have to come out, then it’s better it does so from a position of strength.’

  ‘I… I don’t know what you mean,’ Vern stammered.

  ‘You don’t need to,’ I told him. ‘Only that Terry and I have the disks, and that you and I will talk again. Now, tell me anything else I may need to know, Vern. And then I’ll tell you exactly what to say when they come for you.’

  37

  The journey from the rest stop and the subsequent flight had given us all time to catch our breath and start the recovery process. Physically, we were all fine. Neither my ex nor my daughter had been harmed since being snatched out of their home, although at the point of the abduction, Donna reacted as any mother would and had received a back-handed slap for her troubles.

  Emotionally, we were all over the place. Wendy held me tighter than ever, her head buried in my chest. Occasionally she would let out a sob followed by a low moan, and I knew she had been hit by a vivid memory. That was what living through such a terrible ordeal did to you; the elation at being alive and unharmed, safe and secure, in collision with the awful replay of things you had seen and the knowledge of what might have been. The disparity between the two sensations was vast, something the human mind was often incapable of withstanding.

  Donna was mostly silent. Having boarded the plane, she and I had hugged and held each other for a long time. So long in fact that Wendy came over to wedge herself between us. I understood a little of what Donna was feeling, that dreadful sense of inadequacy that she had not been able to prevent our daughter from being subjected to the horror of abduction nor the witnessing of violent death at such close quarters. She needed the touch of another human being, someone to hold and be held by. I was more than happy to be that person.

  Terry did his best to cheer everyone up when the silence became too oppressive, but his was a losing battle this time. Being the ex-wife of a Royal Marine, Donna was familiar with the stories of firefights, had been personally affected by such events when I was wounded. But now she had witnessed in all of its gory detail the shooting and killing of four men, each of whom would have caused a draught to brush against her flesh as they fell lifeless to the floor. It gave her a fresh insight into why I had not wished to discuss such incidents in the past, but the haunting nature of her new reality would not be welcome.

  As for Wendy, I could only imagine how she felt at seeing her father gun down a man. I was responsible for only one of the four bodies we left back either in or slightly outside that room, but even though on the way out Terry had shielded her eyes from having to look at the other men taken down during our storming of the property, my daughter not only knew they were there, but also that some of them had died by my hand.

  None of us spoke about the spatter on our clothing, though each of us had visited the Lear’s bathroom to wash away blood and tissue.

  At one point during the flight back to LA, Donna seemed to realise with a jolt that their ordeal was not over.

  ‘Our home is going to be filled with police and FBI again,’ she said.

  I nodded. I reached across the narrow divide between seats and took her hands in mine, Wendy shifting with me as I leaned forward. ‘They’ll come. But I’ll speak with Drew, and he can bring in a lawyer to help manage the interviews. But yes, they will want to speak with you both.’

  ‘And between you, Terry, the sheriff and that FBI agent, you decided the story could be told without anyone owning up to knowing who you two were. Is that right?’

  In the end we had not all met up at the sheriff’s office as planned. Terry and I had decided that it would not be a good idea for us to be trapped inside that building should the FBI put in an unexpected appearance. Instead, we pulled over in a rest stop area along the way. I left Donna and Wendy sitting in the Jeep while the four of us hammered out an arrangement we could all live with. It amounted to both the sheriff and FBI agent dismissing us in their reports as merely two more men intent on raiding Mangas Crow’s home. There would be no mention of our presence at the sawmill. When we were done, we shook hands with Crozier, and Heather gave us a hug and wished us luck. I liked them both, and believed they had the necessary strength and determination to pull it all off.

  I had earlier related some of the conversation that took place between the four of us in Agent Green’s vehicle. I nodded now at Donna’s question, and said, ‘It makes life easier for everybody that way. Neither Crozier nor Heather need to admit that they worked with us, and no matter who else was around to see us, like the two young girls, we’ll just be two men amongst so many others who broke into that property.’

  ‘And us? Me and Wendy. We’re supposed to lie, too?’

  I shook my head this time. ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do, Donna. I think we all need to sit down to discuss it, Drew included. If we think it best for you to tell the truth, then that’s what you do. Terry and I will figure things out. I don’t want to put any further undue stress on you or Wendy.’

  ‘I won’t tell them Dad and Terry were there,’ Wendy said adamantly, sitting up straight. She looked between me and her mother. ‘I’m not getting them into trouble. Mum, they came all the way over here because we asked them to. They found Vern and they saved him. Then they found us and saved us, too. I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep again after what I saw today, but I couldn’t live with myself if I helped hand Dad and Terry over to the police. I just couldn’t.’

  I loved my daughter’s spirit and sense of justice at that moment, but I was pained by her admission of how the events back in Ruidoso had affected her. Every time she closed her eyes she would see it happening all over again.

  I knew.

  I had been there.

  I felt the bump and drag of the Lear’s wheels dropping down. We were coming into land. ‘Look,’ I said gently. ‘Nobody needs to make a decision right now. There is such a mess left back in New Mexico that neither the police nor the FBI are going to come knocking on the door tonight. And between us I think we can hold them at bay for any number of reasons until we are all much calmer and can think straigh
t. So let’s just go eat, then we’ll head back to your place and figure things out.’

  We ate at the In-N-Out burger joint on Cahuenga Boulevard close to Universal City, home of the movie studios. I chose it because I thought it might be the same place used by one of my literary heroes, Detective Harry Bosch from the series written by the author Michael Connelly. I understood how insane that sounded, and the look I got from Terry when I explained my choice, spoke volumes. But the place was thirty minutes from Van Nuys airport, and Drew agreed to drive over to join us there rather than pick us up at the plane.

  Figuring I would need a vehicle if I was going to hang around for a few weeks, I rented one from a company close to the airport. The four of us arrived at the burger bar first and claimed a large curved corner booth. Wendy slid in beside me and wrapped both arms around my chest, her head resting on my shoulder.

  ‘I missed you, Dad. I missed you so much.’

  ‘I’d only been gone a few days.’ I hugged her back and rubbed my nose against hers, something I had done throughout her childhood.

  ‘I know. But even though you were only here for a night, you were still here and it felt as if that was the way things were going to be.’

  I pulled my daughter close. She smelled clean and fresh and still so very young. Over her shoulder I looked at Donna, who gave me a nod and a shrug. Had she flown to England to see me, Wendy would have stayed with me knowing she was a visitor, understanding she would return home after a couple of weeks or so. My going out there felt different to her somehow. A more permanent arrangement, although I had suggested nothing of the sort. I could only imagine how hurt she would be when it came time for me to leave. I would make good on my promise to spend time alone with her, but this was her home, not mine.