Scott Free

by John Gilstrap

  “Okay, okay, slow down,” Alexander was saying. “Just take a seat and start at the beginning.”

  “There’s a dead man in a car down the street—”

  Brandon recognized the voice the instant he heard it. He whirled around. It was too good to be true, he knew—too miraculous—but please God, let it be.

  “—he’s been shot, and I wrecked the truck. We have to—”

  They made eye contact the instant Brandon stepped out of Whitestone’s office into the squad room. The boy seemed two inches taller and fifteen pounds lighter than the last time he’d seen him. He was bloody and his clothes were torn to shreds. He walked like his body hurt, listing a bit to one side, and on top of it all sat an unruly mop of blue hair. Brandon had never seen a sight so beautiful. “Oh, my God,” he breathed, and at that instant, the rest of the people in the room understood.

  Scott seemed bewildered. “Dad?” His features melted and he started to cry. “Dad!”

  Brandon sprinted across the room, knocking over a chair and pushing Sanders out of the way as he hurried to hold his baby boy again. He folded Scott into a crushing bear hug. “Oh, my God,” Brandon sobbed. “You’re safe. Jesus, I’ve been so worried, thank God you’re safe…”

  They sank to the floor, just the two of them, and for the next little while, strapping Scott O’Toole was eight years old again, afraid of the dark and of the monsters in his closet, his feelings hurt by the bullies in school. He hugged his father back, embarrassed by his tears, but unwilling to stop them, grateful to finally be back in the embrace of the one man in the world who, with a single word or a well-placed joke, could make the worst calamities right again.

  Whitestone and the others gave them space, unsure what they should do, while in the back of the room, Sherry Carrigan O’Toole stood with her fingers pressed against her lips, her face wet with tears, watching the reunion of Team Bachelor.

  Never in her life had she felt so alone.

  SCOTT FELT SHERRY’S PRESENCE before he saw her. He looked up from the crook of his father’s neck, and there she was, standing so far away, watching without moving. He gently pushed himself away from Brandon, who didn’t want to let go at first, and he struggled back to his feet. Everything ached. Every joint screamed. But he was safe again.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad or merely frightened. Her face was red and her lip quivered, and it occurred to him at that moment that he’d never seen his mother cry before. He held his arms out in front, open, beckoning, and she hurried past the desks and the staffers to embrace him in a hug the likes of which he’d never felt from her.

  “Thank God you’re safe,” she said. Her voice was a raspy whisper. “Oh, my God, I’ve been so worried.”

  Scott hugged her back. “I’ve been kind of worried myself,” he said.

  Sherry cupped the back of his head in her hand. “I am so sorry,” she said.

  “For what?”

  She pulled away from him just far enough that she could frame his face with her palms. “For everything,” she whispered.

  And he understood. She hugged him again, but this time he embraced her with only one arm, offering the other to his dad. Brandon didn’t hesitate, and for a long moment, there in the police station in Eagle Feather, Utah, they were a family again. It felt odd, at first, Scott thought, in a weird, imbalanced way. But then he allowed himself the fantasy, if only for a minute or two, of what life might have been if a thousand things had gone differently.

  Finally, it was official. He was alive.

  “Excuse me,” someone said. It was a tentative sound, a stranger’s voice. Scott looked up to see an older couple watching them, standing so closely together that they might have been one person. “I’m Arthur Jamieson,” the man said. “Cody’s father. I was wondering…”

  The expression on Scott’s face was enough, it seemed. The woman at Arthur’s arm seemed to shrink at a single glance, and she covered her face with her hands. Scott felt his mouth working to form words, but he didn’t know what to say. Several cops moved quickly to help the old couple into chairs.

  Scott looked to his dad. “Cody didn’t make it,” he said. Somehow, the words came more easily when speaking to his father. “He was killed in the crash.”

  “They know,” Brandon said softly.

  Watching the Jamiesons surrender to their grief triggered something deep inside of Scott. It came from a dark, terrible place, and once the gate was open, there was no holding it back. The emotion came without warning, pouring out in long, choking sobs and his parents were on him in an instant, trying to console him, to comfort him. But how could they? What could they possibly say that might dim the memories of white snow churned red by wolves? Of a new friend disembowled and lifeless? What could anybody do to make the agonized shrieks of Cody and Mr. Pembroke echo less loudly in his head?

  What could they possibly do to bring the dead back to life?

  “It’s so unfair,” Scott sobbed.

  His parents said nothing. They just held him and rocked him until he was ready.

  33

  “FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, SANDERS,” Brandon growled. “Give him some room. He’s exhausted.”

  “He can sleep tomorrow,” Sanders replied. “Right now, I need to know what he knows. Give it to me again, kid.”

  “His name is Scott,” Sherry said, but Sanders’s only response was a bored glare.

  It looked like what it was, essentially—a jailhouse interview, with Scott on one side of a conference table, flanked by his parents, and Agent Sanders and James Alexander on the other side. Scott was so tired he couldn’t remember what he’d already told them, so he started from the beginning. He told them about Isaac’s witness protection story and about the two men who came to kill him. He told about dumping the bodies into the dry well, and, finally, about the chase that ended here in the police station. So far, the only portion of the outlandish tale that had been verified was the part about Mr. Pembroke and the dead police officer, Jesse Tingle. Barry Whitestone was out breaking the news to Jesse’s mother.

  “If the FBI were running some kind of a covert operation up here, I’d know about it,” Sanders said. “It would have been in the security brief.”

  “Isaac said they were bogus,” Scott said.

  “Might’ve been bounty hunters,” James suggested.

  Sanders looked at Scott. “Or a figment of a young imagination.”

  Scott fired a panicked look to his father, then said to Sanders, “You think I’m lying about this? You think I’d make this stuff up?”

  “I’ve never seen anything shot up like that truck was,” James said. “I want to know how you got out of there.”

  “I jumped,” Scott said, rubbing the bruises he had to show for it.

  “Out of a moving car?”

  “The truck was barely moving,” Scott explained. “I yelled to Mr. Pembroke, but…” His voice trailed off.

  “Tell me what he said about the president,” Sanders said.

  “I already did.”

  “Again.”

  Brandon had had enough. “For God’s sake, Sanders, show some respect for what he’s been through.”

  “Why do we keep talking?” Scott wanted to know. “Shouldn’t you guys be raiding Isaac’s house?”

  “That’ll happen in time,” James assured.

  “But he’ll be gone!”

  “From what you tell me, he’s gone already. Either way, it’ll take some time to muster the troops and get the paperwork done.”

  “Paperwork?” Sherry asked, aghast.

  “We’re trying to find a magistrate to approve the warrant.”

  “Can we talk about this assassination plan, please?” Sanders said. “You’re worrying about horses that have already left the barn. I’ve got a healthy thoroughbred to protect. So, Scott, tell me. Where did this assassination plot come from?”

  “Think about it,” Scott said. “Why else would he stick around after the shoot
ings this morning? Whether those people he killed at the house were cops or mobsters, somebody’s trying to get him, so I figured that unless he had another job to do first, he’d take off. Then I remembered that the president is in town, so I put two and two together.”

  “Two and two,” Sanders repeated, musing. “So, you never actually heard this DeHaven guy say he was going to kill anybody.”

  “I watched him kill people. He didn’t have to tell me anything.”

  “But he never said he was going to kill the president.”

  That question slowed Scott down. “No,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “But who else?”

  “I don’t understand you, Sanders,” Brandon said. “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck—”

  “You don’t understand the way the Service works,” Sanders said. “I’m not trying to badger the boy. It’s just that we’re expecting about five thousand people in the square tomorrow, and if the threat were more direct, I might be able to convince Eagle to change his plans and let us make ourselves more visible. Like any politician, he doesn’t like to be surrounded by bodyguards. I don’t think he’ll go for it based on this.” He rested his forearms on the table and leaned closer to Scott. “You’re sure he didn’t make a direct threat?”

  “I can say he did, if that makes your job easier,” Scott offered.

  Sanders held the eye contact for a moment longer than was necessary, then sat up straight again. “No, that’s fine. Last thing I want you to do is lie.” He shifted his gaze to Brandon. “You guys gonna be around for a while?”

  Brandon looked first to Scott and then to Sherry. “We’re going back to the chalet. If you need us, you can reach us there.”

  They all stood. “Thank you very much,” James said, shaking Brandon’s hand. Then it was Sherry’s turn, with Scott saved for last. “Glad to finally meet you, Scott. We’ve all been thinking about you a lot these past few days.”

  Scott smiled. “It’s good to be back.”

  “You sure you don’t want him checked out by a doctor?” James asked the parents.

  Scott pleaded with his eyes. “No,” Brandon said, “I think we’ll save the poking and prodding for later.”

  James said, “Suit yourself,” and he started to follow Sanders out the conference room door.

  “Oh, James,” Brandon said, prompting the cop to turn around. “Try not to need us, okay? Not for another couple of days, anyway.”

  IT COULDN’T POSSIBLY have been six hours. Six minutes, maybe, but six hours? No way. Yet, that’s what the clock on the nightstand said, and the sunlight streaming through the massive windows verified it. It was all Scott could do to stay conscious in the shower when they got home. After that he’d collapsed in the king-size bed, and that was the end of it.

  Now, seemingly seconds later, it was eleven in the morning, and he thought he’d heard his name.

  “Over here, Scott,” the voice said again. It was his father’s, and it sounded delightful.

  Wincing against the intrusion, the boy rolled over and burrowed deeper under the covers. “Leave me alone,” he groaned.

  “We can’t do that,” said another voice.

  Something about the tone shot fear through Scott, and he sat up abruptly. God, he hurt. Through his barely open eyes, he saw a cluster of silhouettes in his doorway. “Who are you?”

  “Chief Whitestone, Eagle Feather police,” the voice said. “We met earlier this morning. You probably remember Agent Sanders.”

  Yeah, sure, he remembered, and after vigorously rubbing his eyes, he could see them all.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Brandon said. “This really can’t wait.”

  Scott adjusted himself against the headboard, and pulled the covers up protectively. “What is it?”

  “Mind if we sit down?” Whitestone asked, even as he helped himself to a corner of the bed. “We raided the Flintlock Ranch about two hours ago, and found everything just the way you’d described it, from the bodies in the well to the tunnel in the secret room. What we didn’t find was your friend DeHaven.”

  Scott looked at Sanders. “I told you he’d get away.”

  “We also found the vault you’d described,” Barry went on, “wide open and stripped of everything. Looks like he took his arsenal and nothing else but a few clothes.”

  “Get to the point, Chief,” Brandon prompted.

  “A quick check of the fingerprints in the cabin show that your Isaac DeHaven can be tied to several other murders over the course of many years, some as recent as a few days ago.”

  “No shit,” Scott scoffed.

  “I mean in addition to the ones you’ve witnessed. We do indeed believe that your Isaac DeHaven is a professional killer.”

  Scott smiled, in spite of himself, proud to have figured it out.

  Sanders stepped forward to take over the narrative. “Just because we can match the fingerprints doesn’t mean necessarily that we can trace them. We can put DeHaven at the scene of the other murders, but we still don’t have any idea who we might be looking for. We simply don’t know what he looks like.”

  A sense of dread had begun to bloom in Scott’s stomach. When he saw the grimness of his father’s expression, the size of the knot doubled.

  “They need your help,” Brandon said.

  Scott’s eyebrows joined in the middle.

  “It’s simple,” Sanders said. “You do know what he looks like. All we want you to do is watch the crowds this afternoon—”

  “He’ll kill me!” Scott blurted.

  “You won’t be alone,” Whitestone said. “At least one of my officers will be with you the whole time. If you see DeHaven in the crowd—”

  Sherry walked into the room in the middle of the pitch. “Absolutely not,” she said.

  “He’ll be perfectly safe,” Sanders assured.

  Sherry shook her head vehemently. She was dressed for her press conference—recently recast as her victory conference—and looked stunning. “No, perfectly safe is what he’ll be if he stays as far away from that madman as possible.”

  “Relatively perfectly safe, then,” Sanders said. His annoyance with the interruption was palpable.

  Sherry turned to her ex-husband. “Tell them, Brandon.”

  Yeah, Scott thought. Tell them, Brandon.

  The boy’s father cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. “I said the same thing initially. But I’m afraid there’s a darker side to all of this.”

  “That’s right,” Whitestone said. “These murders that DeHaven has been linked to. It appears that a good portion of them were carried out solely to eliminate witnesses.”

  Scott’s stomach-knot quadrupled in size.

  “What are you saying?” Sherry gasped, but her expression showed that she already knew.

  Whitestone looked straight at Scott as he said, “Son, this might be the best and only chance for you to find peace of mind. Ever. As you know, we have every reason to believe that DeHaven will be lurking in that crowd somewhere this afternoon. If you see him, or if we get him on our own, then he’s out of business and the good guys have won. If not…” He trailed off.

  “I’ll never sleep soundly again,” Scott said, finishing the thought for him.

  Whitestone sighed and nodded. “I’m afraid that’s the way we see it, yes.”

  Scott turned that horrible thought over in his mind. He’d seen the coldness with which DeHaven dispatched his enemies, and that was without the frustration of a score to settle. Jesus, he’d never be able to relax. Every stranger passing him on the street, every waiter in a restaurant…

  You don’t ever want to cross me, kid.

  The words echoed through his head. When he looked up, they were all staring at him, waiting for his answer. “This really sucks,” he said, finally.

  “Yes, it does,” Whitestone agreed. “Righteously.”

  They shook on it, and it was done.

  34

  SCOTT FELT LIKE SOMEBODY’S MANNEQUIN.
/>   He stood in the middle of the police station’s squad room, his arms outstretched as James Alexander fitted him with a Kevlar vest. The place was packed with police officers now, apparently representing a number of jurisdictions, judging from the various styles of uniforms. The one thing they all had in common was a black stripe across their badges, in deference to Jesse Tingle.

  “I’m really sorry about your friend,” Scott said to James. “I feel kind of responsible.”

  “Thanks for the thought,” James said, drawing the Velcro tight under the boy’s armpits, “but you’re not the least bit responsible. Jesse died doing his job, and it was a job he’d have cheerfully laid down his life for.”

  Scott looked at his dad and got a sad smile in return.

  James stepped back to admire his work. “Okay, that looks about right. You’ll wear that under a coat.”

  “That’ll stop a rifle bullet?” Brandon asked.

  “It’s what we all wear,” James said. It was an artful dodge that neither of them pursued.

  “What about his head?” Brandon said. “Don’t you have a helmet or something to protect his head?”

  Scott was horrified. “I’m not wearing a helmet, Dad. People will think I’m a retard.”

  “I’m thinking about your safety, son. Besides, you’ve got to cover that blue hair with something.”

  “I’ll wear a hat, then. A ski cap. But I’m not wearing a helmet.” All he could think of were those kids in his elementary school who wore modified football helmets to keep from hurting themselves.

  James explained, “We’re playing the odds, here, Mr. O’Toole. First of all, even the vest is overkill. Merely a precaution. That said, most killers go for the body because it’s a higher-probability kill shot—a bigger target. Chances are, to even better his chances, a killer will be using hollow points or devastators, which are designed to open up and slow down on impact. Without a vest, it’s almost a guaranteed kill shot. With the vest, it’s nothing more than a bruise. Okay, a really big bruise, but one you can walk away from. Finally, by keeping the vest under his outer garment, we make the body that much more attractive a target. Does that make sense?”